https://aeon.co/ideas/the-mind-isn-t-locked-in-the-brain-but-extends-far-beyond-it?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d3f294acf8-Daily_Newsletter_7_July_20167_7_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-d3f294acf8-69057377   Currently, all theories of behavior— save one — treat the mind of the dog as a self-contained faculty of intelligence. It’s the easiest way for the human intellect to conceptualize the phenomenon of intelligence given that the intellect is primarily fixated on material causation. As this article puts it, historically […]

“Most people, including many scientists, believe that emotions are distinct, locatable entities inside us — but they’re not.” Lisa Feldman Barrett   Professor of Psychology Northeastern University http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/what-emotions-are-and-arent.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0 If you have been following NDT theory then you are not among the “most people” referenced above. My study of dogs through the lens of the immediate-moment […]

I’m the object of a regular beat-down on the site of the Unknown Scientist and I return to these “discussions” because they so clearly demonstrate the internal contradict at the heart of modern Behaviorism. {Of course these are the same theocrats who criticized me in the seventies, eighties and nineties when I argued that wolves […]

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 […]

One of the best parts of the NDT conference was the variety and quality of the various venues we visited. The Von Liche Kennel tour took us through the greatest privately owned working dog kennel in the world, an inspiring example of a dream coming true through the power of passion. We also rode on […]

At the 3:00 minute mark of this video there is an excellent example of how the notion of calming signals leads to a fundamental misinterpretation of two dogs interacting. The author of the video interprets an interaction between a yellow dog and a black lab in terms of calming signals, as one self-contained entity of […]

We see them every fall; migrating hawks, one by one streaming into a rising swirl of warm air, like children hopping onto a carousel, one that operates on a vertical as well as a horizontal plane. The raptors enter at the bottom and each go round carries them higher and higher into the bright blue […]

Here’s an interesting finding reported on in the NY Times that confirms my model that where the individual finds themselves within the group dynamic, which is a function of Temperament, then alters their hormonal/biochemical processes, rather than the other way around. So hormones don’t cause the behavior, rather they support integration into the group mind. […]