There’s several dog blogs I check from time to time to see how others think about dogs. I used to make comments on these various blogs but these don’t seem particularly productive. People project so much onto dogs, that they think they know what I’m saying without actually taking the time and trouble to understand […]

In this article the author conjoins two studies which demonstrate that wolf hunting behavior is analogous to the mass flocking of starlings. This is an interesting article because these studies demonstrate the exact opposite of what this author is arguing in the article entitled: “To Hunt, Cooperation Is Not Needed.” The evidence the author cites […]

What is body language? http://www.coffscoastadvocate.com.au/story/2012/07/13/horse-training-methods-questioned/ This article demonstrates how interpreting behavior in the absence of a model leads to a defective conclusion. I’m not speaking here about what is the right way to train a horse, the researchers might be right that one shouldn’t scare a horse with a plastic bag, drive it around a […]

Action at a Distance, Change Over Time, the Mental Ether and Why my horses stomped the ground and bobbed their heads as I brought them their evening buckets of sweet-molasses grain.   I’m re-reading Gleick’s biography of Newton in the hopes of getting a better handle on Calculus without having to confront the math directly. […]

Cliff (of Lenny fame) and Eric Brad has an interesting exchange on Eric’s site, linked below, and this gives me the opportunity to emphasize again the fundamental distinctions between NDT and Learning Theory. And even though I’ve probably said these things many times on this site before, perhaps in this interweaving of a number of […]

“Design In Nature” Zane, J. Peder; Bejan, Adrian (2012-01-24). Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization (Kindle Locations 1560-1564). Random House, Inc.. DIN: “One of the most powerful insights born from the constructal law is that social systems are natural designs that emerge and evolve to […]

Chapter Six   “Why Hierarchy Reigns” I think chapter six will prove to be the most critical chapter as in how the constructal law intersects with animal behavior. Today we find a reinvigoration of the debate over dominance. The last several decades the positive, learning theorists have been arguing there’s no such thing as dominance […]

Design In Nature: “As we have seen time and again, the constructal law was just waiting to be discovered. Its manifestations are so obvious and ubiquitous that we have danced around it for centuries—the hunches of scientists, the metaphors of poets and mystics, and everyday language (for example, “the tree of life,” “go with the […]

Here’s a point of distinction I’d like to make about this exceptional book and the principle of emotional conductivity, by which even human thoughts serve a flow principle (as well they should given the logical extension of the book’s premise of an overarching constructal law). “The constructal law captures the broad tendency of social organizations […]

Here’s some interesting research on the function of tears that shows a link between crying and a decrease in sexual arousal and is prompting a flurry of interpretation. I’d like to suggest how this might fit into my emotion-as-energy model. First of all, the animal mind creates a virtual shell of insulation, a buffer zone, […]

We often hear in dog training circles the expression “high value reward” as in find what your dog loves best, be it food, toy, type of praise, and then begin from there. But this immediately begs the question, how is the value of any given reward tabulated in a dogs’ mind? and which we certainly […]

Physical memories of experience are typed first and foremost according to intensity. The output of the Big-Brain is this intensity, the stimulation engine, perhaps quite like an engine in a car. The Big-Brain is the sensation dynamo, the sensory interface with the environment, and it generates a certain amount of thrust that is variably grounded […]

All animals play, especially when young, and often with objects. But when you throw something for a dog, it’s like a boomerang: with just a bit of deft management it comes right back to your hand. Why? Because the dog wants its “self” back. We often wonder how dogs see themselves. Do they see themselves […]

Kevin and Trisha continue their discussion from the Quantum Canine Episode 1 Part 1. In this section, hear more about participants’ experiences at the Rowe seminar, as well as Kevin’s interpretation on what their dogs are really expressing. This clip also features Kevin conducting the groundbreaking Pushing Technique, and provides video examples for such terms […]

In the early eighties I found myself describing certain behaviors as “electric,” as for example when a dog is defensive, fearful or hyper, bristling, tense, taut and touchy, while other behaviors I intuitively would call “magnetic,” as for example when a dog is rolling on the ground, body contacting with others, supple to the touch, […]

Evolution is the story of overcoming resistance. Things must be broken down in order to exploit their energy. Concentrating and storing energy in order to overcome resistance is the organizing principle of every species’ anatomy, physiology and behavior. Inside your dog is a battery, an emotional reservoir filled with “unresolved emotion”. Unresolved emotion is created […]