drive to make contact

Wired To Be Social Nov 03, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/books/review/social-by-matthew-d-lieberman.html?ref=books&_r=0 NYT Review of “Social” by Matthew D. Lieberman The premise of this book, while overly weighted to the neurochemical basis of behavior, nevertheless is getting deeper to the core and fits nicely with NDT tenet that there is only one drive, the Drive To Make Contact, and emotional affects evolved to compel organisms to […]

Point Three Jul 23, 2013

http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2013/07/21/5-tall-tales-from-1-small-mind/ POINT THREE: Resource Holding Potential   Animal Behavior Desk Reference – A Dictionary of Animal Behavior Ecology and Evolution 2nd ed – Barrows (CRC 2005) An individual organism’s potential for obtaining, or retaining, a resource based on its fighting ability [coined by Parker 1974 in Maynard Smith 1976, 44]. An individual organism’s potential for […]

Body Language 2 Dec 30, 2012

This diagram outlines the generic problem confronting any dogs when they interact. Any interaction has to be understood as an emotional transaction, and emotion moves from one individual to another by way of the same processes by which physical momentum moves. An animal moves its mind through the same neurological and physical scripts by which […]

Dogs and Cats Playing Tug Nov 02, 2010

Of the millions of cats in America, a few indulge in a kind of tug-of-war with their owners, and if one does a survey of the video record on the internet one can find such offerings. These are excellent examples of comparative behavior between cats and dogs as a means of understanding the phenomenon of […]


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Books about Natural Dog Training by Kevin Behan

In Your Dog Is Your Mirror, dog trainer Kevin Behan proposes a radical new model for understanding canine behavior: a dog’s behavior and emotion, indeed its very cognition, are driven by our emotion. The dog doesn’t respond to what the owner thinks, says, or does; it responds to what the owner feels. And in this way, dogs can actually put people back in touch with their own emotions. Behan demonstrates that dogs and humans are connected more profoundly than has ever been imagined — by heart — and that this approach to dog cognition can help us understand many of dogs’ most inscrutable behaviors. This groundbreaking, provocative book opens the door to a whole new understanding between species, and perhaps a whole new understanding of ourselves.
  Natural Dog Training is about how dogs see the world and what this means in regards to training. The first part of this book presents a new theory for the social behavior of canines, featuring the drive to hunt, not the pack instincts, as seminal to canine behavior. The second part reinterprets how dogs actually learn. The third section presents exercises and handling techniques to put this theory into practice with a puppy. The final section sets forth a training program with a special emphasis on coming when called.