“Chakrabarti and Rabitz analyzed these observations of the proteins’ behavior from a mathematical standpoint, concluding that it would be statistically impossible for this self-correcting behavior to be random, and demonstrating that the observed result is precisely that predicted by the equations of control theory. By operating only at extremes, referred to in control theory as “bang-bang extremization,” the proteins were exhibiting behavior consistent with a system managing itself optimally under evolution.”

## These “extreme states” in NDT would correspond to prey and predator polarities. When two dogs meet and differentiate themselves according to these poles, (which is inevitable because according to the principle of emotional conductivity they will experience extreme friction if they don’t) all the emotional charge they’ve accumulated over the course of their life and which vibrates as their “personality” can eventually smooth out into a wave function, (dogs playing and mounting) and then evolves into what we recognize as an emotional bond. Now this energy has been harnessed and moreover is a source of information (deflected onto a midpoint) that can be applied to overcome more and more formidable forms of resistance (group of wolves breaking down a herd defense) and thereby add new energy to the system. ##

“The scientists do not know how the cellular machinery guiding this process may have originated, but they emphatically said it does not buttress the case for intelligent design, a controversial notion that posits the existence of a creator responsible for complexity in nature.”

## Our mistake is to look at behavior and thus evolution through the prism of Time because this compels us to find The Prime Mover. And whether it is the God of Genesis or the God of Randomness, these are both Deities in their own way requiring the exact same leap of faith and this then precludes objective inquiry on what is happening right before us. It is a mistake to think in terms of a Creator (even though I am very comfortable with the notion of a Divine Intelligence) because this runs the evidence through the filter of causation. For example, these researchers uncovered the nature of this protein mechanism not by searching for its cause: in that case they would have settled for a gene theory, but by coming to understand how energy worked in the immediate moment. This is the same way physicists studied the atom, electron, photon, and so on. Science didn’t ask: What is the cause of electricity? In order to understand the nature of electricity they simply studied it in terms of the immediate moment and this manner of inquiry is so powerful that it then led science to understand the possibility of a Big Bang. So the irony is that only an immediate-moment analysis can apprehend the nature, and only apprehending the nature can allow us to offer educated guesses about causation. Likewise we shouldn’t interpret animal behavior through the prism of Time because then we will need to divine the source of their behavior via the notion of a Creator of some type.

In my view a better way to state the paradigm is: the DESIGN is in the INTELLIGENCE. For example, the “intelligence” inherent in electromagnetism is that it has a variable state of conductivity and this has gone on to evolve into the operating system of all computers. It doesn’t matter who invented the computer, because by virtue of electromagnetism being semi-conductive, the invention of the computer, and therefore even the internet of interconnected computers, is a foregone conclusion. It doesn’t matter who invented it, someone would have. The Hero will always remain faceless in our minds because of this certainty. Likewise, since emotion captures environmental energies as system inputs, and then it serves as a synchronizing medium for self-organization according to the variable conductivity of emotion, (once an organism acquires unresolved emotion it requires another individual to trigger and resolve it) sociability is as inevitable in the evolution of biological systems as the internet was in the evolution of the computer. ##

“Chakrabarti said that one of the aims of modern evolutionary theory is to identify principles of self-organization that can accelerate the generation of complex biological structures. “Such principles are fully consistent with the principles of natural selection. Biological change is always driven by random mutation and selection, but at certain pivotal junctures in evolutionary history, such random processes can create structures capable of steering subsequent evolution toward greater sophistication and complexity.”

## All these recent breakthroughs (epigenetics, emergence theory and this protein-energy-transfer system as an example of PCT) that are now seen as “extending Darwin’s theory” (which I suppose they do if evolution isn’t seen as a gene driven theory in service to the God of Randomness), is for me not leading it down toward a deeper understanding but in the final analysis will be seen as slowly taking it apart bit by bit. ##

“In this paper, we present what is ostensibly the first quantitative experimental evidence, since Wallace’s original proposal, that nature employs evolutionary control strategies to maximize the fitness of biological networks,” Chakrabarti said. “Control theory offers a direct explanation for an otherwise perplexing observation and indicates that evolution is operating according to principles that every engineer knows.”
“The researchers are continuing their analysis, looking for parallel situations in other biological systems.”

## I’m proposing that what we are looking for, the fundamental mechanism underlying all other mechanisms whether physiological or psychological, is visible in the behavior of animals as an expression of energy. In other words, animals evolve as a network, their genes subscribing to its universal energetic logic, not the other way around. ##

So in the interest of drawing distinctions between Natural Dog Training and current theories of learning, I want to pose the following question: What does OC say about the following: If a dog is stimulated by something within its sphere of perception, for example a dog perks its ear and watches someone a hundred yards away through a window, but doesn’t actually become “stimulated” so that soon its head is resting between its paws, and thus the dog hasn’t done anything, interacted with anything, nothing has affected it in any way, and therefore nothing of any reinforcement value can be said to have occurred, has in fact nothing happened? In other words, is it possible that something has changed within the dog even though no reinforcement has happened?

Currently on the web site “Dog Star Daily,” which is promulgating the work of Dr. Ian Dunbar, Lee Kelley is engaged in a point-by-point discussion involving neuro-anatomy and learning theory as he argues for a different interpretation of what such evidence reveals.

Click here for the discussion.

Lee is being taken to task for an article he wrote on his Psychology Today Blog wherein he entertains the proposition that Operant Conditioning might be losing the intellectual battle against the Cesar Milan media juggernaut because why would there be a media juggernaut if Operant Conditioning model was truly comprehensive. The OC camp counters by saying what battle? And if there is one it’s due to a misapplication and misunderstanding of learning theory. They also argue that whatever technical success Cesar enjoys is due to his inadvertently capitalizing on those aspects of learning theory that he is able to apply correctly.

As I mentioned, on this particular web site there is in depth discussion of neural anatomy as well as liberal use of the term “thinking.” The following quote was posted by “fun4fido” in the above mentioned article and thread that was prompted by Lee’s article.

“…there are two different processes, a dogs behaviour is guided by either emotion or thinking. Two sets of structures in the brain share a very important relationship in canine behaviour. The limbic system is a complex circuit of neural structures involved in the expression and experience of emotions. The cerebral cortex on the other hand is involved in various cognitive functions including learning, thinking and problem solving.

The limbic system and the cerebral cortex have an inverse relationship. When either one is activated, the other system cancels out, or rather gets over-ridden. If a dog is mentally stimulated and encouraged to think, his cerebral cortex will be activated and learning is effective. In this state he is less likely to experience intense emotional responses. Likewise, a dog that experiences intense emotional responses has his limbic system activated and his cerebral cortex inhibited. A dog experiencing an intense emotional response – and I must stress the word intense, is reacting to a given stimulus/event and no longer thinking. This intense emotional frame of mind is not a good place for a dog to be because it can push him/her to react instinctively, and not all instinctive behaviours are helpful to a dog in the human world.

Learning is best accomplished when a dog is in thinking mode, in particular, this is why counter conditioning and desensitisation should always be applied while the dog is sub-threshold, when a dog is over threshold his/her stress level is too high, emotions take over, the dog starts to react, and is unable to learn effectively.”

Now this is a very definitive statement based on drawing an explicit connection between components of the brain, and I can understand the merit of such logic. The fact that dogs and humans share certain critical brain structures that seem central to thinking does present a compelling argument that dogs may be capable of thinking. OC believes this is then confirmed in the phenomenon of learning. Therefore, it seems reasonable to ask the question that such definitive statements beg, what are dogs thinking?

Pet communicators likewise claim that dogs think but then they go on the record and articulate what they think dogs are thinking. So since learning theorists argue that the phenomena of complex and learned behavior is fully encompassed by the science of learning, what are dogs thinking?

I was hoping you had a moment to take a look at a video I shot this morning.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I am dogsitting a friend’s dog named Milo who is a pitbull mix ~1.5 yr old. he and Indy (my dog, doberman mix, 6 y.o.) do not always get along, but I’ve tried to create an environment for them where they can have positive experiences together.

My question is– in NDT terms, what is happening in this video? I don’t have a good understanding of how to apply energy theory when dogs are interacting with one another so I’m eager to fill in the gap. Specifically, is there any obvious event or trigger that causes Indy’s outburst? He also attempts to mount Milo when Milo gets near me.

I want to be able to understand what Indy needs in these circumstances… I feel like if I understand what he’s “telling me”, then I’ll know what to do from there.

Thanks for any insight!”

—I posted the article below but its play-by-play analysis is a bit dense and may be confusing so a brief overview now serves as a preface.

The Overview: Dogs are attracted to each other with an emotional force that is stronger than can be consummated through simple contact and companionship. Therefore, and due to the canine emotional makeup, this force is typically deflected onto a common object-of-attraction, what we could call a “midpoint.” In the wild such a midpoint would be the moose, but anything will do if it can absorb the group’s collective energy. Canines self-organize around a midpoint so that they can consummate their combined energies. In this video the stuffed toy served as the midpoint, but when it disintegrated, the dogs still had the same degree of energy, however, without the grounding of the toy, the head-to-head positioning triggered physical memories of earlier crashes and eventually Indy exploded at Milo. This is also why after wolves work together to make a kill, once the moose is dead on the ground, the group disintegrates and a pack reassembles complete with snarls, fangs and hackles. In the video, after the emotional collapse, Milo repaired for recharging from a human, whereas Indy tried to reconnect with Milo and get him moving again by humping him. This syndrome can be prevented if the owner learns how to be “the moose” and then this takes the instinctual charge out of dog-on-dog play.

The Long Version

Dogs are attracted to each other with a force that is stronger than can be satisfied through simple physical contact or companionship. Therefore in order to connect, they must first emotionally polarize and differentiate according to Predator and Prey polarities as these are the two primal Temperament traits that compose an emotional energy circuit. In one moment, one acts as prey, the other acts as predator, the former absorbing energy, the latter projecting energy, and if they can “flip polarities” back and forth, they make “new energy” (which is the point of behavior and evolution) just like the phenomenon of magnetic induction, (i.e. a magnet moved around a coil of wires induces an electrical current—the prey is the virtual “magnet,” the layers of stress in the body/mind as an emotional battery are the virtual “copper wires”). New energy is social energy and this feeling of connection can be as fragile as a soap bubble that pops when touched, or as strong as a PVC pipe you can drive a cement truck over. In general over the course of this video Milo is occupying the prey polarity and Indy the predator.

However, the more alike two dogs are, the more attracted they will be to each other and yet paradoxically as it may first seem, the harder it will be for them to flip polarity and thus the more potential there will be for friction. A dog’s ability to flip polarity in the face of likeness and thus resistance is its “emotional capacity,” i.e. how much new energy can move through the connection before the “bubble” (feeling of connection) bursts. {For example, animal consciousness is exactly like a child learning to ride a bike. He may be okay at 5 mph, but then at 6 or 7mph he loses his ability to feel his body’s physical center-of-gravity and tips over. The child now associates an intense spike of new energy with the collapse of a feeling and therefore the presence of danger.}

The strength of the connection and degree of capacity is dependent on whether the dog can project its “emotional center-of-gravity” fully into the object of attraction and this means that no energy is held in reserve and this also means that no matter what happens, it can always feel its body’s physical center-of-gravity.

The easiest way to flip polarities and increase carrying capacity when the intensity of energy is getting higher is to revolve around a common object-of-attraction. Thus, two dogs’ energy will be deflected off of each other and onto this object, such as the tug toy in the video. In the wild, this deflection tendency of animal electromagnetism will motivate and inform group predators such as wolves to hunt an object of resistance (moose) that can absorb their combined energies.

Such an object serves as an emotional “ground” so that the intensity of head-to-head positioning and the pulses of each dog exerting more and more force, can be displaced into a “frequency” and thereby smooth the irregular spikes of intensity into a wave pattern. This is soothing to a dog’s nerves because each dog’s output becomes periodic and rhythmic and because the dog has an object in its mouth to feel grounded so that it is therefore not worried about losing its balance and can still feel its body. The balance circuitry is what pops the bubble.

In this interaction, as long as the bite object in this video is intact, then this object is able to absorb both dogs’ energies. However as the form of the toy begins to disintegrate, the rhythmic frequency of their connection begins to disintegrate as well and they must now contend with the sheer intensity of a force of attraction that can’t be consummated with simple physical contact and that generates more and more energy by virtue of each others movements. This ungrounded energy (intensity) brings the physical memory of disconnect to the surface of each dog’s awareness. Deeper levels of stress in the battery are now in play to deal with the mounting crisis and the sensations affiliated with disconnect (falling) then prompts the deepest energy held in reserve (and that hasn’t been projected onto the other) to rush up to the surface in an attempt to keep energy moving. This happens in Milo before it happens in Indy.

Also, in any given interaction, one dog will tend toward “electric” i.e. being more concerned with balance, and the other more “magnetic” i.e. referencing its hunger circuitry. We can see that because Milo is younger, while his body is very supple and magnetic, he is not able to sustain a focus on the object as is Indy and so is increasingly focusing on Indy’s eyes and re-positioning on the bite object to get closer to Indy’s eyes as the source of its disconnect. In effect it’s crowding Indy out but, from Milo’s point-of-view he is really trying to connect with his own physical center-of-gravity that he’s starting to not be able to feel. We can see that energy is slipping away from Milo’s jaws and into its front feet as it tries to maintain contact by hooking one paw over the object. It’s putting energy into its footing and losing focus on its jaws because it’s losing the feeling of connection. A rush of electrical intensity comes out of Milo as he “flashes” Indy in trying to reposition his grip and this first burst Indy is able to endure, although loading is well underway. On Milo’s second rush-toward-the-head to get more of the shrinking toy in its mouth, because Indy is the object-of-such-intense-attention, Indy’s bubble does burst, he goes from magnetic to outright electric, and he releases deeper, pent up layers in his battery. In the face of Indy’s outburst Milo freezes up in the preyful polarity and since the prey controls the predator, Indy likewise gets paralyzed in Predatory mode and this terminates the issue except for the fact that now both dogs have the problem of the collapse and needing to reconnect with something in order to neutralize the continuing reverberations of that shock and the sense of enervation. Milo comes to the deck for human input to recharge his battery. Indy attempts to reconnect by snuffling Milo in order to pick up preyful essences off his body. Since Indy has smelled and ingested essence, when he comes on deck he goes into “hubba-hubba” on Milo as a sensual response to the resistance of Milo-as-prey not moving.

This video illustrates the general principle that the purpose of play isn’t for fun or for practice, but to induce energy (where does new energy come from? Old energy, stress acquired by experiencing resistance and getting stored in the battery) so that it can be deflected into working together in the hunt. There is no such thing as play per se. Play is deadly serious. Specifically to these two dogs, the video shows that the dogs are holding back energy, (In Indy’s case this is due to previous incidents) and this ultimately puts sharpness into the “game” which triggers deeper layers in their respective batteries when the volume of energy being expressed hits that specific degree of intensity. (It also shows how Indy is transferring physical memory onto Milo.) So the two dogs can play, but only up to 60 mph. When the game gets going above the speed limit, they revisit an earlier crash and then have no “idea” that Milo is Milo and Indy is Indy.

What is alike within them is the source of their “problem.” Because they are alike in this way, they are having trouble flipping polarity at more intense levels; they can’t differentiate and turn the intensity into a wave because they are still holding back energy deep in their body. Perhaps both dogs sleep on the bed, or some other subtle nuance of the group dynamic could be the point of friction, perhaps an owner’s emphasis on sharing, fairness or being nice. Fortunately, while they are alike in size and some personality predilection, Milo is young and Indy is 6 years old, Milo is light with tight coat while Indy is dark with stock coat, when he gets stuck Milo gravitates to “preyful” with a soft, rounded expression, Indy to “predatory” with a sharp focused expression, and these inherent differences mitigates an all out fight.

What excites me about my energy model is that I believe I’ve discovered a constantly repeating fractal expression of behavior: a simple and easily recognizable module that constantly repeats itself to factor out more and more complex behaviors and ultimately, a social and cooperative nature. Since all of nature seems to be an expression of just such fractals, from the “golden ratio” that is evident in the anatomy of mollusks to human beings, the spreading circulation systems that are found in watersheds, lungs, to tree branches and root systems, the photo-voltaic effect that empowers all green plants, the two pairs of amino acids that make up every gene, I’m convinced that this must be true of behavior as well.

In my view this behavioral fractal is an expression of how energy moves in nature, from a place or pole of higher concentration, to a place or pole of lesser, an “action potential” that constantly recapitulates itself so as to realize more energy through complex social behavior. I am using the term energy exactly as science does, as an action potential, the same energetic dynamic by which our nerves and cells function and so it seems sensible we might find this same organizing principle in the behavior of animals as well. The advantage to an energy interpretation (as fantastic as this might sound) is that it allows us to see inside the mind of the dog. (We might recall that simply by studying the radiation of heat from a warm object as a function of energy, the “ultraviolet catastrophe” this ultimately allowed physicists to see inside the atom and divine the existence of the photon. And this came well before there were linear particle accelerators.)

My search for a fractal pattern for behavior came from a belief that evolution is correct, that which is complex evolved from that which is simple, that the formed evolved from the unformed, in other words, energy. I was also searching because I saw that the current models for behavior didn’t encompass all the evidence and failed to articulate just such a fractal building block.

On the other hand, and understandably, if one believes that dogs are all figured out by science, then one wouldn’t see the need for a new theory of behavior. So I postulate my energy idea, a few people see the sense of it, at least in part, because it’s very hard at first to apprehend it in its totality, it only took me three decades, but the majority in the mainstream say it is ridiculous or an over-complication of what already has been said.

I have posed a number of questions which the folks who say an energy theory is ridiculous or irrelevant have so far failed to address. For example, why does a dog sit for a cookie, or is afraid of slippery floors, or lifts its leg, and so on. On my last site I had a questionnaire that I will dust off and fix the wording so the points are clearer, but again, there is criticism without exposition. When I talk about the eye contact technique as revealing how the canine mind as an energy circuit works, the experts say this is merely operant conditioning, and yet the technique doesn’t have to be conditioned so it’s as if we are speaking two different languages wherein the same words mean different things. If something doesn’t require conditioning, how can it be Operant conditioning?! I invite someone from the dominance or Operant perspective to explain precisely why my explanation for why-a-dog-sits-for-a-cookie or looks-into-eyes-for-access (flipping of emotional polarity) is ridiculous or overly complex by way of explaining why in their view a dog, and only a dog, sits for a cookie or looks-in-your-eyes without training. In short, what’s going on inside the dog?

“I think you mentioned previously that when the moose calls the wolves always come running. Can you explain that a bit further? How does the moose call and why do the wolves always come running?”

**Allow me a little poetic license to make the point of wolves responding to the moose, although I do mean it literally. Wolves are always “charged” by the sight of a moose no matter what else is going on and so therefore it has captured their attention and this is the first element in commanding a dog to come to its name. Since this charge travels all the way down to their “emotional center-of-gravity,” which is exactly where the sound of a dog’s name reaches, therefore the degree of displacement that a moose can engender is in fact, exactly the same as a dog hearing its name when called. So because the moose can reliably transmit “the charge” it is therefore “in charge.” If the moose doesn’t act like prey then the wolves can’t act like predator. So whenever it’s available to be chased which it transmits through its carriage and deportment, the wolves always come running.

“Also you said “since there is only one emotion, only one want and only one drive”. I take it this is the drive to make contact?”

**Emotion, want, feeling and drive-to-make-contact go together like this.
There is only one emotion, a monolithic pull of attraction when the body/mind is displaced by any perception of change. The degree of displacement equals the force of attraction. But, attraction invariably meets with resistance and this causes unresolved emotion, or stress, and this doesn’t go away but accumulates and is stored in the body/mind which serves as an emotional battery. Stress can only get out the way it went in, and this makes it “form sensitive” by which I mean it potentiates the brain to see things in terms of the form of that which caused it to be formed. So when the circumstances surrounding the original attraction that was not consummated is revisited, stress will be activated as well and now we have Drive. Drive is emotion plus stress and this contributes force to the dynamic as well as a level of information, i.e. the ascertaining of a focal point for the energy, “the negative” or predatory aspect.

If as the dog goes forward in drive, it then experiences a degree of resistance to the drive-to-make-contact, this resistance is converted by its Temperament into sexual energy by arousing the hunger circuitry. The hunger circuitry is aroused because the Temperament can apprehend the preyful essence of the thing. If the arousal is strong enough, the dog projects its emotional center-of-gravity (the deepest core layer of stress) into the object of attraction and this now becomes a feeling and a new level of information, i.e. an angle of deflection (sexual energy as a magnetic-like influence). Therefore the dog doesn’t Drive in to the object of attraction in a straightforward manner, but rather in a circumspective manner, and yet unlike an instinct that encounters resistance, it doesn’t suffer any loss of emotional momentum, and in fact can be aroused even more. And if the two parties in the engagement become conductive enough to the other, in other words the rhythmic frequency of their syncopated movements can channel all the built up intensity/stress that they each carry, then a state of emotional suspension is induced and whatever the object of attraction does, imparts more energy and more information to the other, specifically, what the object of attraction is feeling. (This transfer of information is possible because all animals have the same basic emotional makeup; species of animals vary according to emotional capacity at which point instincts take over and these then lock each species into its environmental niche.) This platform then allows the two parties in the interaction to differentiate into polar opposites, in the beginning as prey/predator, and then if it evolves further, male/female, and ultimately over the long run, highly differentiated personality traits. So at the most basic level, if the moose doesn’t act like prey, the group can’t act like predators and at the higher end of the energy spectrum, we observe that any two dogs that live together become equal and yet opposites in all things, save one. What we characterize as their personality.

There is only one want, the flow of energy. There is only one true feeling, resonating with a want, and this feels good. No matter what we want, an ice cream cone, a new pony or a mustang convertible, when we experience having it, the good feeling is always the same. The Drive to attain what we want is always the same. The experience of resistance between us and a want is always the same. They vary only in terms of strength.

”Also if food does not work as reinforcer, via operant conditioning, in teaching and rewarding behaviour i.e. a simple sit, why and how does the dog happen to end up learning the correct response to the command?”

** When a dog wants food, it projects its “self” into the complex object of attraction, i.e. the person holding the food: and the degree of projection is proportionate to the degree of hunger. The eyes of the person penetrate to the dog’s emotional center-of-gravity via the alimentary canal (the first primal emotional pathway). The emotional center-of-gravity is through Pavlovian conditioning associated with the body’s physical center of gravity, this constitutes a dog’s sense of “self.” Because the dog is attracted to the food, the alimentary canal dilates, and because the food is held overhead, the dog feels a push of energy traveling down the open alimentary canal just as if an internal magnet is being pushed down by an external magnet (handler holding food), and the dog will feel an urge to press its butt into the ground in order to “ground” this surge of energy, in other words it feels a pull between its butt and the ground in response to this push of energy, just as it feels a pull to a specific spot in the yard in order to push out a surge of energy in the act of elimination. No other species of animal but the dog can “flip polarity” in this way and become the South Pole to the handler as North Pole (by virtue of handler holding the food and thereby being construed as access channel to the food) which other animals should be able to do if it is meaningful to say that dogs sit for food because they associate sitting with getting a treat and that food is a reinforcer in and of itself. One can also see how the same dynamic is involved in the ease with which one can house train a dog.

The formation of an association is dependent on how the emotional dynamic works within the dog. Emotion as a pull of attraction which then “ionizes” the body/mind via the projection of the emotional center-of-gravity, and this induces feelings as a push/pull so that there is a universal template around which social interactions can organize.

”You also said “Dogs seemingly become non-food motivated, even though all healthy puppies are obviously food motivated, only because they go on to experience during the course of their maturation other forms of resistance that then become their definition of aligning within a group”. What sort of resistance do they go onto experience? How do these experiences affect a pups development? What do you think about the critical or sensitive socialisation periods and what is natural dog trainings thoughts and processes on raising a puppy?”

**The form of a thing contains energy, and this form therefore equals resistance to obtaining that energy. A carrot contains energy, but to obtain its energy the form of the carrot has to be broken down by chewing it up and subjecting it to gastric juices and digestive enzymes. Thus, any object of attraction that is in form, such as another dog, a person, deer, rabbit, etc. is an object of resistance. So, making contact with anything in order to obtain or exchange energy means overcoming resistance that is inherent in the form of the thing. In the beginning, puppies don’t have an emotional battery. They are virtually pure expressions of Temperament which is why they are all alike in the beginning. As they experience resistance to getting what they want during the process of maturation, they become more ionized and begin to differentiate to a genetically determined resting place on Temperament as a circle. They each orient to this specific pole which is respective to the others’ in their litter as a way of coping with resistance. This organizes the many into a group manner of orientation. They still have the entire circle in their genetic makeup, Temperament with a capital “T” but they orient to a specific slice of the spectrum because they feel most comfortable at this pole when in the presence of the other members of the group, their temperament with a lower case “t.” However if one of the group is removed, the others will shift to reestablish a symmetrical arrangement. Therefore Temperament is not static and is dynamically responsive to environmental and temperamental circumstances.

During the course of its development, the most intense experience of resistance becomes the organizing principle of the dog’s behavior and this is more powerful than so-called critical and socialization periods. I think these latter concepts have some validity, as does a genetic makeup, but have been overly emphasized as if they are insurmountable. So for a young pup, getting food from its mother with all the jostling going on, not to mention coping with the weighted-ness of life on planet earth after two months of gestation suspended in a womb of amniotic fluid, is a huge dose of resistance. But as it matures this will evolve into other more complex forms of resistance that will be overcome through synchronized group action, such as car rides or chasing deer that can never be caught, and so a bowl of food loses its resistance value as an organizing principle for the average dog (unless that is the dog becomes food defensive).

The main thing about raising a puppy, is to ensure that its Temperament survives into adulthood so that it can readily flip polarity in order to smoothly adjust to ever changing circumstances, rather than respond with instinct or with habit. Temperament turns Stress into Sexual energy in service to Drive.

Journey to the Heart of the Dog Natural Dog Training Seminar

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Explore why dogs do what they do, why we think about them the way we do, and how to understand a dog by learning to see “by feel”.

Traditionally the idea of heart has been a romantic notion, a wonderful sentiment, an apt metaphor, but dogs are here to show us that heart is tangible, material, and down to earth. It is a faculty of intelligence by which animals adapt to their surroundings and by which emotional energy is communicated from individual to individual, even across the species divide. The most amazing example of this is the dog-human emotional bond.

This is not a workshop about obedience. Before you set out to train a dog, you need to know how a dog’s energy works. You can establish amazing rapport once you learn how to work with his or her energy, instead of fighting against it.

Much of the time we will be outside observing dogs in nature and exploring Kevin’s way of knowing dogs. There is only room for a limited number of dogs, so you are welcome without your dog. Or if you’re thinking about getting a dog, come to this retreat first. If two people come together, they each get a 10% discount. Even if your dog stays home, you and your dog will be glad you came. Dogs want to be understood.

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I traveled across the country to work with Kevin because, having gotten a lot of help from a lot of talented trainers, he was the only one who seemed to be describing what I felt was *really* going on in the heart of my dog. I ended up learning more than I could have ever imagined. Kevin is the true “dog whisperer,” a rare soul whose intuitive understanding of the nature of canine emotion gives him unique clarity as a trainer and a human being.

Kevin’s philosophy isn’t about “fixing” the dog, it’s about fixing the dog-human relationship. It holds that only through cooperation with and nurture of the dog’s true nature that we can have a fulfilled dog-human relationship–an idea that I think lies at the heart of a human evolution towards truly understanding animals.

Working with Kevin was a privilege, and both me and my dog are grateful!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.