Hi there

[lmiasda]

Hi,
My name is Lisa Madison and I do canine massage. I discovered NDT through persistence in trying to better understand canine behavior. I read a lot and cetain things have bothered me regarding training, and more so of late, so I thought I'd post my thoughts here.
From what I've been reading, wolves do not have packs in the way we think of packs. They are family units, Mom, Dad and kids. So does that mean that the "packs" we create of unfamiliar dogs together is "wrong"?
If, when wolves are in capitivity, they form a dominance heirarchy wouldn't that then be the norm for dogs as well?

OK Lee and Neil let me have it!!

Thanks,

Lisa

[Lee Charles Kelley]

Hi, Lisa,

Welcome!

To start with, the formation of wolf packs is a function of prey size. Wolves that settle near a garbage dump don't form packs; they have a looser social arrangement. Coyotes sometimes form packs, but only when they need to hunt large prey.

If this is so, then any aggregation of wolves, dogs, coyotes, etc., that doesn't operate as a hunting unit, would not, technically be a pack. This would not only apply to captive wolves, but feralized domesticated dogs, and groups of village dogs.

That's the first part of the problem.

The second part is that, yes, in captive wolves and village dogs, we do see more of a tendency for those animals to form what scientists have, since the 1930s, wrongly called dominance hierarchies. However, the problem there is that unless animals have the capacity to understand concepts like superiority, and rank and status, these formations can't rightly be called dominance hierarchies. Just comparing one thing to another, without going into abstract thinking, requires the use of language.

In order for the pack to succeed in a "chase-and-ambush" type of hunt, they have to have a number of different types of temperaments, or emotional attitudes toward prey. If everyone had an "alpha" temperament, or "beta" or "omega," they'd never get anywhere. It's only when the emotions of the pack as a whole get diffracted (similar to the way a prism diffracts light) into a full spectrum of predatory attitudes, that the pack is successful.

The final piece is that in real wolf packs -- that is, those who routinely hunt large prey --, hunting become the natural mechanism for reducing tension and stress. Since in loose aggregations of canines don't have that natural outlet for reducing stress, and for diffracting their temperaments into a cooperative spectrum of emotion, they form "stress-related hierarchies."

I hope this helps!

LCK

BTW: A recent study done on mice shows that when "submissive" mice are given a certain type of anti-anxietal medication, they become less submissive. It's also been known for quite a number of years that "dominance aggression" can be treated and managed (though not cured) with another type of anti-anxietal drug.

[lmiasda]

Ok so you've tackled that one let's try another.
I met Kevin this weekend at the Journey to the Heart of a Dog semiar and it was very interesting and very confusing. My biggest problem today is grappling with the idea that dogs do not form associations but they do remember things. I know I just butchered that terribly but I'm sure you know what I'm trying to remember and can not only clear up the notion but then explain it to me so I can wrap my brain around it.
The best part of this forum is my ability to constantly go back to things when I get confused and see them in black and white to clear up my little brain.

Lisa

[Lee Charles Kelley]

Kevin says "dogs don't remember, but they never forget." This sounds like a Zen paradox, but it's not. It's based on an older, evolutionarily speaking, form of consciousness that humans can still tap into at key moments, but it's a place where dogs and all other animals (except members of the dolphin family and some primates) live all the time: in the now moment.

Kevin also says that dogs form associations but don't learn from them. To break this down, I would say that dog forms an association between an event and its emotional components (the release or compression of emotional energy, the amount of emotional energy released or compressed, etc.), but do so as part of a gestalt. They're not mentally analyzing all the components of the event, they're processing them similar to the way a computer program processes voice recognition data, through pattern recognition. But the association is felt, literally, in the body, rather than connected in the mind through a "first this happened, then that happened" type of mental construct. Think of it as being "in the flow," "in the moment," or "in the zone," something we experience only rarely, and only when our brains have been switched off or are in heightened states of awareness.

For a dog to learn by mental association - where he associates one moment in time with a later one - he'd have to be capable of "understanding" the linear flow of time, i.e., the ability to engage in mental time travel. He'd also have to be able to make comparisons between one thing and another, which requires the use of language. (Helen Keller said that before she learned sign language she lived in a state of "no consciousness," unable to compare one mental or emotional state with another.) Pattern recognition is a cognitive pre-cursor to making logical or sequential comparisons. In fact, chess masters win their matches more through simple pattern recognition than through logical thought. (This is why IBM's Deep Blue was able to beat some pretty serious chess masters.)

So when a dog has a pleasant or unpleasant experience, it isn't stored in a data-base in the brain, to be called up and analyzed comparatively at a later date, it's stored in the body, primarily as muscle memory. When a similar event occurs later (similar, that is, in its emotional and visceral qualities), the dog doesn't remember the previous event and lay it out as a mental template over the current situation; he re-lives it as if it's happening again for the first time. (This also happens to us when confronted with certain sensory details, like familiar smells.)

I hope this helps,

LCK