https://aeon.co/essays/the-feedback-loop-is-a-better-symbol-of-life-than-the-helix “We appear to have come to a threshold. The more we know about the molecular processes, the less sense the gene-centric perspective makes.” Sooner or later behaviorism will recognize the thermodynamic nature of animal behavior as the current gene-centric theory (random variability of gene encoded traits filtered by natural selection) makes less and less […]

Finally the Unknown Scientist has made an argument against me that isn’t wholly a straw man/ad-hominem work of rhetoric. https://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2015/06/07/kevin-behan-ignores-genetics-invents-a-new-history-for-the-doberman/ I have written that most breeds, the Doberman Pinscher in particular, have deteriorated when their function was subordinated to fancy and friendliness. The Unknown Scientist points out that the Doberman in reality suffered from a […]

(This is a long article to demonstrate how recent science validates the theory of Natural Dog Training as first articulated in the 1980’s.) Text: Sometimes critics ask for the math that substantiates the theory that underlies Natural Dog Training (emotion=attraction—-feelings=resistance) which is a little tough given that I’m not a mathematician. And the request is […]

Recently I became aware of “The Higgins Method” of gun training developed by Brad Higgins. Brad has sent me two videos and invites commentary so I’ve added the NDT way of looking at things. http://vimeo.com/59023204 http://vimeo.com/56924329 Brad’s website is below: http://higginsgundogs.com/about-us/our-method/ It’s very gratifying to find folks from different ends of the dog training spectrum having […]

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 […]

System: 1) A complete exhibition of essential principles or facts, arranged in a rational or organized whole, or a complex of ideas or principles forming a coherent whole. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary   When a personality theory (one animal relative to another animal as in a dominance/submissive interaction) introduces a principle of energy in order […]

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 […]

Generally we think of a rabid animal, foaming at the mouth, sinking its fangs into  the nearest warm blooded victim, as a crazed, frenetically enraged beast, a “mad dog” on a berserk rampage. Yet if we more closely consider the behavior of a rabid animal, we observe that there is a coherent and time-deferred string […]

The prey drive, manifested by a full, calm grip on a bite object and most importantly, by the body moving along with a smooth flowing gait, is like the Central Processing Unit in  a computer: as the CPU turns electrical inputs from the key board into information—the prey drive turns neurological inputs from the brain […]

Thanks to Angelique for the following video. http://www.dogwork.com/ddsff4/ It demonstrates that dogs don’t play in order to practice for the hunt (what then is the deer practicing for?) but that there is a common code that orchestrates all animal consciousness and that this rather than higher cognitive capacities are the basis of the high social […]

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 […]

Apparently Lee Kelley has the temerity to question Patricia McConnell, one of the leading lights of dogdom, over her methodology, the particulars of which she posted in public, in response to two of her dogs not getting along. In my mind Lee wasn’t “attacking” her honor, virtue, honesty, compassion, intelligence or integrity, he was questioning […]

In the seventies I was training a Bernese Mountain Dog and after weeks of training and the dog seeming to have mastered the obedience exercises, I decided to test my control by taking him into the pasture with my father’s herd of cows. Big mistake When the dog was but one millimeter beyond some invisible […]

It’s true that anyone can claim to be natural and in one sense, everyone is being natural because in the final analysis, the dog responds to what the trainer does through a naturally evolved temperament and so it’s always the dog’s nature that’s being affected no matter how arbitrary the training approach. The term natural […]

Some of my definitions are scattered across this site and mostly in terms of why-dogs-do-what-they-do, but what follows is a more concise summary. ENERGY: An action potential, a differential of force between two poles. Energy in animals builds up by virtue of a bipolar, two-brain makeup each with its own divergent agenda just as if […]

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 […]