I have been expecting that “How Dogs Work” would spur a great debate throughout Dogdom. Yet the only discussion I’ve found is a review posted by Dr. Bekoff on his Psychology Today blog. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201511/how-and-why-dogs-play-revisited-who-s-confused Beckoff challenges Coppinger and Feinstein’s thesis that play, specifically the play bow, represents a state of conflict, i.e. an emergent behavior […]
Whenever Coppinger inquires into the nature of the dog, conventional thinking and cherished romantic notions are quick to fall by the wayside. In “Work” Coppinger has pushed the limits of the current paradigm to its breaking point, which is why it is a seminal book. Yet at the same time, the power of his argument […]
Anytime a book merges canine behavior with thermodynamics (the study of how things move) it represents a milestone in Dogdom. “How Dogs Work” by Raymond Coppinger and Mark Feinstein, (University of Chicago Press) is such a book. “It’s not too far off the mark to say that, for ethologists, what evolution really “cares about” […]
http://www.amazon.com/Invaders-Humans-Their-Neanderthals-Extinction/dp/0674736761/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427910718&sr=1-1&keywords=shipman+invaders The hunt made the dog, not the hand of man. In all of Dogdom there is only one theory, model and training system predicated on the above belief; Natural Dog Training. For thirty five years this fundamental tenet of Natural Dog Training has been running against the grain of conventional thinking […]
I began in dogdom with the assumption that dogs were descended from wolves given what I learned from my father. At first this meant that an owner should aspire to be the vaunted Alpha pack leader figure. But through my work with protection and police dogs, and which led me to the German view of […]
http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2013/07/21/5-tall-tales-from-1-small-mind/ The Unknown Scientist: “Mr. Behan reaches new heights in ignorance of evolution when he reworks the creationist lament, “Why ain’t monkeys turning into humans?” He puts his own spin on it by asking: “why then haven’t domesticated versions of foxes and coyotes, not to mention other dump scavengers such as rats, bears, raccoons, skunks, crows, […]
