A warm welcome to Kevin Behan

I wrote to Kevin Behan following our discussion in the following thread...

http://dog-behaviour.niceboard.org/general-dog-discussion-f17/anyone-heard-of-natural-dog-training-t40.htm

He was kind enough to send me a reply and to my delight has joined our forum...

To me that tells me he has dogs best interest at heart and I hope he will join in with our discussions, I very much look forward to read what he has to say and I am sure the rest of the members of the forum here feel the same.

So please wish Kevin a warm welcome....

Please see his website here, well worth a read... http://naturaldogtraining.com/kevin-behan/

Thank you James for your warm welcome and for the invitation to join a reasoned discourse. I apologize for the length of this post but I ’m going to indulge in a preamble to make some broad points so that my responses to comments have some context. Thereafter I will strive to be more tightly focused.
My basic tenet from working with dogs is that all behavior is a function of emotion, but unlike the way others interpret emotion, I believe it derives its fundamental meaning according to innate energetic properties and principles that guide its motion, not in terms of a psychology, or rationales, causes and effects and so on. In the human psyche such a psychology can be layered on top of emotional experience, but I’m arguing that this isn’t the case with animals, at least the ones I’m familiar with. I arrived at this conclusion from an insight that emotion works as a virtual force of attraction, that it’s the universal operating system of animal consciousness, and so when observing complex behavior and learning I strive to trace the movement of the emotion and divine its properties and principles, just like studying the movement of electricity for example through various media. Animals by virtue of being aware of this movement are able to self-organize into complex social structures, and this is most vivid, and therefore easiest to see, in the domestic dog.
Additionally, what renders time coherence to behavior is the existence of physical memory, which results from the experience of resistance to emotional movement, and then resides in the body/mind thereafter as a source of information in its own right; and in fact I believe it is the source of a feeling. This model might first strike one as mechanical since I’m talking about principles of energy rather than an individual’s mind and the notion of a free will, but it turns out that I’m not saying dogs aren’t intelligent or machines, I’m trying to show that their intelligence is a function of feeling, not thinking. And this also recasts the nature of choice in the animal mind, because since emotion in my view is a medium for a group consciousness, this means that a dog has a social mind rather than a rational mind. And this means rather paradoxically that there’s no such thing as individual volition in canine consciousness, rather it takes two to make a choice, and dogs are always making such choices about complementing the object of their attraction, which is the source of their incredible adaptability and why they are not limited to reflexes and habits.

hi kevin

and a warm welcome to you , look forward in reading your post's

marie

Welcome Kevin,
Thank you for this explanation as it sits well with my own personal philosophy in many ways and how I have come to understand the nature of wolves and (probably to a lesser extent) dogs.

Hi Kevin,

I think your post goes a long way to explain that people that view their dog as a substitute child or replacement child for the one's that have flown the nest or see and treat their dog as some other kind of human on 4 legs often run into trouble and their dog does not have much of a life in the way of fulfilment and it can throw up all sorts of behaviour problems, they think that the dog should rationalise that by giving them a home and food they should behave and be grateful, some even explain in great detail (like they would to a naughty child) to the dog and think it must be able to understand them.

Yes that's exactly right. Interestingly, we don't even treat children like we treat the dog that is being treated like a child. A parent doesn't raise a child to be a friend or for companionship because they are hopefully, understanding the child in terms of their heart, and so they most want to know, what does my child want? So that's my advice to dog owners, not to proceed in terms of what do they the owner want, but always what does the dog want. This will always lead to a great rapport and true companionship with a dog as derivatives of fulfilling the dog's group purpose. This is its deepest want.

I agree entirely....

Most people get a dog to fulfil a need for them or to replace something missing in their lives, most of the time unconsciously.

Not many even think about fulfilling the dogs needs.

Interestingly we are now at the stage with some parents where they are totally and utterly focused on the child and what they can give the child in the terms of material possessions, totally ignoring the fact that a child needs to learn its place in society, not everyone is always going to be a winner and you don't always get what you want, especially if you have a tantrum. I was taught to give up my seat on a bus/train to an adult , open the door and let an adult go first,for instance, does that happen now?? NO i could go into various other social niceities as well that no longer are the norm. We are now at the stage where children and young adults behave exactly as they want, when they want, and get what they want when they want, never do anything they don't want to do (such as arrive at school either on time or at all) However because people are now treating animals, such as dogs, as substitute children, they are also allowed to do what they want, without boundaries, because the people who have them have no idea themselves about boundaries and good behaviour, therefore when dogs behave as dogs and not as subsitute children the owners of these dogs are completely unable to comprehend what is going on, or why. The poor dog is either passed on, put into rescue or pts.
Anyway, I only started this to say Hi, and hello from The Norties..............