If you’ve read everything that I’ve written up until now, you should have a pretty good understanding of what Natural Dog Training is and how Natural Dog Training elicits obedience behaviors and solves problems for our dogs.  However, after the 2nd edition of the “all about dog training” blog carnival (and a few questions that I received), I decided to look back through the articles, and I realized that what was missing was a succinct summary of Natural Dog Training.  The following summary of Natural Dog Training should give you a very clear picture of how Natural Dog Training uses a dog’s emotional interaction with the world, in particular their prey drive, to truly make them the happiest dog on the block.

First, let me ask you a few questions (then I will give you my answers):

1. What is the point of training your dog?
2. What does it mean to have the “happiest dog on the block”?
3. What does a truly harmonious relationship with your dog look like?

Take a moment to think about your own answers to those questions, and then keep reading.

1. What is the point of training your dog? For me, the point of training a dog is not to have a command/control relationship with my dog, and not to teach my dog a repertoire of tricks for my next vaudeville act.  In my book, a “trained” dog is a dog whose world naturally revolves around me, who will come when I call no matter WHAT the distraction is (another dog, a car, a moose), who is emotionally healthy in their interaction with other beings (i.e. not aggressive, not hyper, just relaxed), and who otherwise stays out of trouble, while feeling free to have fun and interact with the world.
2. What does it mean to have the “happiest dog on the block”? In my estimation, the happiest dog on the block has ways to productively deal with the stress that life in “human world” creates in their life.  The happiest dog on the block is fully engaged in play when it’s time to play, and is fully committed to resting when it’s time to rest.  Otherwise, the happiest dog on the block is friendly to other people, dogs, cats, etc.  In general, the happiest dog on the block ends each day feeling like their deepest needs (as a DOG) have been satisfied.
3. What does a truly harmonious relationship with your dog look like? When you have a truly harmonious relationship with your dog, most of the time that you spend with your dog honors the way that your dog truly sees the world, and you put the world into a context that your dog can understand.  Rather than causing stress, your relationship will help your dog release the stress that day-to-day life sends their way.  During downtime, your dog is free to rest, while you are free to live your human-centered life on your own…in other words, you each have alone time as well as together time.

In the Natural Dog Training philosophy, our dogs are all hunters at their core. The thing that they find most satisfying in life is to “make prey” – in other words, to satisfy their prey drive.  Dogs also see the world through a filter – figuring out what attracts them (prey) and what repels them (predators).  The more energized a dog is, the more that dog will be attracted to things that are “prey-like” and repelled by things that are predator-like.  Since humans are, in general, more predator-like in a dog’s eyes, that means that our dogs will naturally resist contact with us the more energized that they get.

In devising Natural Dog Training, Kevin Behan has created techniques that specifically tap into a dogs prey drive so that we, as dog owners, become more prey-like in a dog’s eyes.  We can tap into their primal circuit, so that the more stimulation the world throws at a dog the more attracted to us they will be.  As they will associate us with the resolution of their internalized stress and energized state, whenever they are energized they will look to us to answer the question “What do I do with my energy?”

Additionally, hunting mode is inherently SOCIAL.  What that means is that as we work with our dogs’ prey drive, we are plugging into their natural ability to negotiate contact with other beings effectively.  A dog whose prey drive is engaged will have a much easier time getting along with other dogs, humans, etc.

Let’s start with obedience:  How does Natural Dog Training “elicit” obedience behavior from our dogs? At the core of all obedience behaviors (“heel”, “sit”, “down”, “stay”) are actions that a dog will perform, automatically, while hunting.  Imagine a dog running alongside a moose through a field, waiting for the perfect opportunity to leap – that dog is actually “heeling” next to the moose!  So goal #1 in Natural Dog Training is NOT to be the alpha dog or the pack leader, the goal, instead, is to ”be the moose” in your dog’s life: the most attractive thing in your dog’s universe.  When you implement the techniques of Natural Dog Training, your dog’s behavior will naturally orient around you, and obedience is a product of the dynamic between the two of you.  Additionally, in Natural Dog Training our goal is to work with a dog in a relaxed-yet-energized state, which means that not only will they still listen to you the more their environment energizes them, they will be MORE attentive and attracted to you than when they were in a low energy state.

Natural Dog Training techniques also teach your dog how to relax at higher and higher levels of stimulation. Most problem behaviors in dogs have two root causes:

1. A dog has too much stored stress and no way of venting (resolving) that stress productively.
2. A dog has trouble relaxing when they’re energized, and their physical tension causes them to have an ‘overload’ response to being energized (aggression, submissive urination, etc.) instead of being in the flow of the situation (which would allow them to handle the energy of the moment without overloading).

The beauty of Natural Dog Training is that we get to focus on the prey instinct (which is Nature’s way of allowing dogs to resolve the stress stored within them) AND relaxation at higher and higher levels of stimulation at the SAME TIME.  Instead of trying to shut down our dog’s emotional responses to the world, we learn how to work with their emotional response, channeling it into desired behavior.  Ultimately our dogs are able to handle whatever the world throws their way – maintaining their connection with us and channeling their energy into what we want them to do.  Of course “what we want them to do” takes their nature, their desire to make prey, into account!

Natural Dog Training allows you and your dog to remain relaxed and connected in the high energy moments when that connection really matters: guests arriving, crossing paths with another dog on a walk, walking without a leash down a path in the woods.  Rather than struggling to contain your dog’s natural impulses, you learn how to work with them, and ultimately you will be able to channel them into obedience behavior.  If your dog experiences “problem behaviors”, your work with Natural Dog Training will allow you to resolve the stress and tension causing the issue.  You’ll have a harmonious relationship with your “well-trained” dog, who also happens to be the happiest dog on the block.

For more details, I suggest the following articles:

For mostly theory and some practice:

• How to be the moose in your dog’s life.
• How your dog feels the world.
• What is dog aggression and how do I stop it?

For mostly practice and some theory:

• How to relax your dog.
• How to play tug of war with your dog and have the happiest dog on the block.
• How to relax and attract your dog using pushing.
• How pushing teaches your dog what do do with their energy.
• How to introduce your dog to another dog in 10 easy steps.
• How to redirect an excited or aggressive dog on a walk.
• How to introduce your dog to another person.

Or just click on the sitemap and browse away!
Thanks for visiting, and if you have any questions or thoughts, please feel free to leave them in the comments, or e-mail me:
neil at naturaldogblog dot com

I’d also love to hear your answers to the 3 questions near the beginning of this article.

In our last post, we discussed “pushing”, which is one of the fundamental techniques of natural dog training.  I described in detail HOW to push, taking you step-by-step through a very gradual process of introducing yourself, and your dog, to the technique.  The goal of pushing is to get your dog to be attracted to you unconditionally – especially in moments of high energy and stress.  In this article, we’re going to describe why pushing is helpful, and how it will transform your dog’s emotional responses to the world into something over which you have direct influence.  Make sure that you don’t skip the end, because that’s where you’ll find out the MOST IMPORTANT part about what pushing is accomplishing in the relationship between you and your dog – answering your dog’s question of “what do I do with my energy?”.

When you practice pushing, you are plugging into your dog’s primal circuit – one of the first things about the world that they learned.  Imagine your dog as a puppy, trying to make sense of the world.  The puppy experiences the world in the most basic of ways – through its mama.  There’s mama’s head/face, with its big eyes, sharp teeth, and the capacity for doling out discipline when the pup gets out of line.  Contrast that with the warm, soft belly, the sustenance and nourishment of mama’s milk and the feeling of satiation that it provides.  This dynamic teaches our dog something fundamental about the way the world works – prey and predator. 

Essentially:

• Head/big eyes/big teeth/etc. = predator – something that stirs up feeling but repels the pup.
• Belly/warmth/softness/sustenance = prey – something that resolves feeling and attracts the pup.

So when our dogs are out an about and feeling the world, it is the “predator” nature of things in the world that stirs them up/gets their juices flowing.  However, the “prey” elements of the world allow our dogs to resolve that energized state – and ultimately it is the GOOD FEELING of that resolution that defines how our dogs act in these energized moments.  In this article on being the moose in your dog’s life we talked about how we humans are actually primarily predators in our dogs’ life (especially if we’re always focused on being the “alpha” dog in our pack) – and how the focus of natural dog training is to make us more prey-like, more moose-like – essentially the most attractive thing to our dogs in their world.

Since our dogs primary experience of us is as predators, it automatically puts them into conflict (with us) whenever they are around us in moments of high energy.  Unless we can become more prey-like, we can’t resolve that energy for them in a way that provides them with 100% satisfaction.  That’s where the pushing comes in.

So when we practice pushing with our dogs, that elicits the emotional memory in our dogs of that initial imprinting that takes place with mama.  Here we are, the big, scary human, and yet we offer them the tastiest morsels of food imaginable.  Our predator-ness gets the juices flowing, and the tasty treats offers them a clear path to resolving that stirred up emotional energy.

OK, so that makes sense (right?).  But why “pushing”?  What does the physical contact and the push add to our dog’s experience?  Why not just always offer them the tastiest of treats – isn’t that enough to teach them that we’re the biggest moose on the block?

Let’s put this into human terms for the moment.  Imagine that you want ten thousand dollars (that shouldn’t be too difficult ).  If you’re starting from zero, it might take a LOT of effort to get to that first $10,000.  However, it might be substantially easier for you to get the next $10,000.  In fact, after a few times, what initially seemed like an enormous sum now starts to seem like small potatoes.  You might desire a larger sum of money, and find ways of obtaining it, since the $10,000 increment is less enticing and satisfying than it initially was.

So at first, the $10,000 would be like the “moose” in your life.  After it becomes easy to get to $10,000, however, that sum becomes more like a “squirrel” – it requires less and less effort to get, and so getting it becomes – while still desirable – less and less satisfying.  We go out looking for other mooses.

Pushing allows us to raise the stakes for our dogs.  It’s giving the dog two primary experiences.

1. The more that your dog pushes before getting the tasty food, the more satisfied they will be when they get the food.  Part of what makes the moose so appealing, remember, is that it takes mobilization of all a dog’s internal energy in order to get the moose – the final feeling of exhaustion/satiation is 100% satisfying.  So as you increase the actual physical effort required on the part of your dog to get the food, you will also be increasing the satisfaction that they feel when they finally get the food.
2. The more that your dog pushes, the more of their energy they are SAFELY mobilizing and directing AT YOU.  We are essentially establishing a new emotional response within our dogs – so that when they are energized they feel comfortable giving us 100% of that energy.  This reconditioning can be tough to do given our predator-ness – if you throw in a bunch of alpha-dog-discipline meant to inhibit our dog’s natural impulses then you might see how much “baggage” there can be in trying to overcome the degree of uncomfortability that our dogs feel when they’re energized around us.  So we start small, just feeding our dog by hand (which begins to energize them).  We move on to subtle massage, helping our dog relax and getting them used to making contact with us as their level of energy rises.  Then we start pushing.  The more that we push, the more that they have to push back, and the more that their energy level increases – with the safe and satisfying resolution of tasty treats.  Over time our dogs learn that they can safely give us as much as they are able to give – measured by the amount of energy that they direct at you with their pushing.

OK – so now for the most important part:
By creating this new emotional pathway for your dog, you are actually inserting yourself into that primal circuit that I mentioned earlier. Your dog learns that YOU offer them the best possible resolution WHENEVER they feel energized.  In order to achieve this goal, you have to get to the point where they are really offering you alot of their energy in the push – and by then you will have created a very strong emotional memory/response in your dog.  It’ll go something like this:

1. Dog starts to feel energized.
2. Dog’s emotional memory kicks in, recognizing (on the level of feeling – not on an intellectual level) that interacting with you brings them total satisfaction at this level of emotional intensity.
3. Dog is ATTRACTED to you – and looks to you for an “answer” to the question “what do I do with all this energy?”
4. You allow them to resolve the energy, staying relaxed and in the flow, and the imprint gets even deeper.

  
Once you can reliably get your dog energized and attract them in their energized state, you will be able to translate this attraction into obedience behaviors.  In future articles, we will address how to train your dog in this state of high drive/flow, and you will see how your dog’s focus actually increases as their level of energy also increases.  In the meantime, keep practicing the pushing, and start paying even closer attention to your dog.  The next time you encounter a squirrel on your walk through the park, your dog might just look to you for an idea of what to do.  If you’re prepared, and push with your dog in that moment, you’ve given them an answer that’s infinitely more satisfying than “try to get that squirrel”. 

Soon we will talk more in-depth about techniques for using pushing to redirect your dog in day-to-day life.

As always – if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments, or e-mail me (neil at naturaldogblog dot com).  Thanks for stopping by.  I leave you with this photo of part of our family at rest in the backyard on a recent summer’s day.  I know, I could really stand to do some mowing – but that tall grass is just so comfortable!