sensual

Babies and Feeling Weightless, Guilt and Feeling Weighted Oct 10, 2013

The science in support of the NDT model comes in faster than I have time to post, and while I’m still trying to catch up on emails, however thanks to Nellie and Lee, some interesting findings bear immediate mention and so I’ve decided not to add these to the queue and trust this brief treatment […]

Why Don’t Free Ranging Dogs Live In Packs? May 22, 2013

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 Reactive Dog and the Power of Will Jun 12, 2012

Impulse Control There’s a lot being said these days about impulse control given the increasing number of dogs being defined as  “reactive.” A dog that over reacts to innocuous events, does so because it feels compressed and it feels this way because it perceives itself to be the object-of-attention. After repeated sensitizations, the threshold of […]

Ian Dunbar On Bite Inhibition Jan 06, 2012

I’ve noticed that reforming problem dogs is getting harder. Why? Because dog owners are now well-trained, and one of the most influential trainers in the education of the modern dog owner is Ian Dunbar, in particular, his concept of “bite inhibition.” Ian Dunbar: “I shall repeat over and over: teaching bite inhibition is the most important […]

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.