From the NY Times 10/10/16 “Why do dogs love to roll around in things that smell repulsive?” “One theory is that their sense of smell is really a complex motor system related to the brain. And so, Dr. Horowitz said, when Finn alights upon a rotting squirrel corpse in the park, the smell […]

I found this discussion on James Gorman’s Scientific American blog on dogs and of special note is one particular comment that I’ve copied in its entirety below. Of course we should always post an asterisk besides these kinds of accounts since they can’t be directly verified, but for me it holds the ring of truth […]

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 […]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27675-monkeys-cosy-alliance-with-wolves-looks-like-domestication.html?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=SOC&utm_campaign=hoot&cmpid=SOC%257CNSNS%257C2015-GLOBAL-hoot#.VXL2Xs7FuRt   In this report we learn of wolves and monkeys developing an amicable relationship that is apparently beneficial for the wolves as hunting around the monkeys increases their success rate in catching small rodents threefold. Having wolves in their midst may confer some benefit to the monkeys as well, for example  keeping other predators […]

    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 […]

Two items in the news from science are of special interest. One is about Biocentrism: http://higherperspective.com/2015/01/consciousness-death.html#26xY0kV3xLRWVu6Z.01 From Wikipedia: “Biocentric universe (from Greek: βίος, bios, “life”; and κέντρον, kentron, “center”) — also known as biocentrism — is a concept proposed in 2007 by American doctor of medicine Robert Lanza, a scientist in the fields of regenerative medicine and biology,[1][2][3] which sees biology as the central […]

An article, purporting to be the latest science on dogs, has been making the internet rounds in condemnation of Cesar Millan. http://yodogcast.tumblr.com/post/55504306960/the-damage-of-the-dog-whisperer-a-scientific-critique Cesar Millan is a particularly nettlesome burr under the saddle of progressive learning/training theorists, who believe that animal behavior is driven by reinforcement. Cesar is challenging this view, in effect saying that there is an […]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131203161715.htm For my entire career NDT has been swimming against the tide of consensus that held that the nature of the domesticated dog is due to its contact with man and to such a degree that dogs were considered to have become an adjunct of human culture. Theorists initially believed that it was pointless to […]

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://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131010124559.htm Pointing is part of the act of emotional projection, which is how we direct our force. (BTW, force is energy.) The projection of force is universal throughout the animal kingdom. It has nothing to do with domestication per se, in other words, animals don’t “figure out” human gestures because of a history of close […]

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, […]

Russell has introduced us to the power of Control Theory, and in this video one can witness it being put into expression as the complex coordinated behavior of quadcopters.   http://www.ted.com/talks/raffaello_d_andrea_the_astounding_athletic_power_of_quadcopters.html I would like to add that underneath the algorithms, sensors and computer processing of these remarkable machines is an even more fundamental and even […]

Question: If wolves hunt in packs—and if hunting begat the dog—why don’t free ranging dogs live in packs? Answer: Dogs don’t form functional packs because dogs were domesticated from wolves. The fact that free ranging dogs don’t form working packs is cited by proponents of dog-as-scavenger theory and modern learning theorists as evidence that dogs […]

The Geometry of Hunting There are two articles about wolves on the blog “Science of Dogs” that merit reading. The first one is entitled: “Freeloading Wolves” and I will analyze it in this post. http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com The author states: “The folkloric view held by some is that of wolves as supreme social predators with some magical […]

Generally the discussions I get into on/line don’t go anywhere. When I make a point it is typically ignored. This is easy to do because for one thing there are too many points of contention in play at once which mean one can radiate off in a tangential direction and evade the logical consequences of […]

Without a model for the animal mind, Dogdom must always return to the notion of dominance in order to explain social structure. Learning theory hasn’t been able to fill the bill and neuroscience merely reduces behavior to its biological nuts and bolts. Furthermore the notion of dominance seems consistent with evolutionary theory, given the assumption […]

I’m looking forward to the possibility of a “blog-a-log” that might develop between Lee Kelley and Dr. John Bradshaw at Psychology Today. Especially since these questions of why animals do what they do I believe help illustrate the distinction between attraction and intention. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pets-and-their-people/201104/greetings/comments I also look forward to reading Bradshaw’s new book, in particular […]

 Thanks to Chris Duncan for highlighting this film. I have to say it’s a stunning confirmation of NDT view of dog nature, domestication and emotional rapport. 1) Relationship between man and dog much older than previously thought and traces to Gray Wolf. 2) The hunting relationship most likely scenario for inter-species entanglement. Furthermore this […]

One of the reasons the energy argument I’m making on this website strikes some as stupendous is because unless one can articulate the distinction between emotion and instinct, and between a feeling and a thought, then one doesn’t know what emotion is or what a feeling is, which means the terms will be used loosely […]

While I’m happy to offer one, why doesn’t a theory of domestication matter to Natural Dog Training? Because NDT is a theory that is based on energy and so therefore it isn’t therefore conflating the questions of – HOW did a dog become the way it is, with: WHY does a dog-do-what-it-does? Rather NDT studies […]

It’s true that anyone can claim to be natural and in one sense, everyone is being natural because in the final analysis, the dog responds to what the trainer does through a naturally evolved temperament and so it’s always the dog’s nature that’s being affected no matter how arbitrary the training approach. The term natural […]