nature

Kevin Behan Guest Blogs on Psychology Today Aug 18, 2012

“Empathy & Evolution: How Dogs Convert Stress Into Flow” Guest Blogger Kevin Behan Explains the Evolution of “Empathy” in Dogs Published on August 6, 2012 by Lee Charles Kelley in My Puppy, My Self “I’m proud to present this guest post by my mentor and colleague, Kevin Behan, originator of Natural Dog Training, which views […]

The Heart of the Matter Aug 18, 2010

Some recent questions posed by Heather really bring us to the heart of the matter. 1) Heather: “It is good that we don’t have to understand the physics when 2 dogs are in motion ;)” KB: Yes, while the laws of motion are simple, the actual computations are vast and too complicated for most of […]

Nature Conforms To The Power Of Desire Dec 16, 2009

A discussion as to whether dogs apprehend reality in terms of a virtual rather than an actual field of energy may not seem particularly relevant to training a dog to stay in the yard and staying off the furniture, but it is. Because dogs are social by nature, they do everything in terms of a […]

Kevin asks the question, what is the nature of the dog? Sep 30, 2009

“What is the nature of the dog?” Is the dog and our understanding of nature all figured out? Natural Dog Training believes that something profound is missing from the current training models and explains its mission in the video below.

Do Dogs Have A Nature? Sep 25, 2009

It’s interesting to read the reviews and comments on Neil’s DVD as well as the assortment of critiques offered on the web in regards to how other thinkers on dogs perceive Natural Dog Training. It strikes me that our respective arguments aren’t intersecting, that we’re not actually making intellectual contact. Some seem to be saying […]

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.