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Kevin Behan

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In the Press

Why This Newsletter?

What more might there be to say about dogs?

My intent is to introduce dog people and those who care about dogs to a new understanding of dogs, wolves, and everything canine, most especially nature. It will prove to be an iconoclastic and radical view on the one hand, but I trust that a simple common sense will emerge as its themes, theories and principles are developed.

Anything directly or indirectly relevant to dogs, their training and the building of a healthy relationship between man and animal, will be covered. I will be paying special attention to what's being published about dog behavior. There have been a number of best selling books about dogs which encompass a lot of provocative material and so rather than covering it in one concise review and leave so much territory unexplored, each issue will feature one aspect or another of the book or article as it pertains to the overall theme of the particular issue. This is necessary because dog behavior occurs on many levels given that nature is many leveled and so any point needs to be examined in terms of each of these levels. For example, any simple behavior that a dog might perform, is happening on an individual level, but also on a group, an instinct and then an even deeper level of nature as well. It can take a bit to untangle their separate but interwoven threads.

This newsletter is needed because in the mainstream and in the trade publications, a homogenized view of dogs is all that is being offered to the public. There are many areas of canine behavior, which to date, seem to have presented us with unresolvable paradoxes and baffling incongruities, and yet there are simple explanations once the right model is applied. And then there are other areas which seemingly are well accounted for, but if the right question is asked, suddenly things don't seem clear at all. For example, it seems unquestionable that dogs learn through association and reinforcement, but we will be considering many common experiences we all have had with dogs which throw this orthodoxy into total disarray. Also, it's axiomatic that dogs organize into cooperative social groups through the phenomenom of dominance and submission. And yet once again, with a new perspective, this can be quickly shown not to make any sense either. For example, if dominant, alpha wolves are the only ones who breed and if genetics is the fundamental medium for the exchange of behavioral information, why is submission a more prevalent behavior in the canine species? How in fact could there even be any submission left in the canine gene pool if hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have supposedly favored a dominant personality? Obviously, something other than dominance and submission has been what has been selected for in evolution and these behaviors are in reality merely side-effects of this which is more fundamental. The truth is that if that fundamental dynamic lies outside the modern understanding of dogs, then something is fundamentally wrong with the modern understanding of dogs.

Altogether, no dogma shall be left unexamined and most likely left standing. It will prove to be a most interesting journey of discovering the true nature of the dog which through its ubiquitous presence and intimate familiarity in our lives, has for too long been taken for granted and ironically, given it's the animal closest to us, the one animal on earth most misunderstood.

Bringing together many varied fields of scientific research and disciplines can serve us well in revealing how nature, and how the nature of dogs, works. This synthesis of information never finds its way into publications which supposedly seek to inform dog people because it threatens behaviorism's central dogmas. This is curious for if but onple fell up from a tree, science would immediately tear down the theory of gravity in search for something more basic and which could accomodate the observation of an apple or two once every few thousand years floating skyward instead of falling to earth. And yet with so much data unable to fit into behaviorisms' models for learning and social organization, the central tenets are left unquestioned. Is behaviorism a science, or is it an ideology? It seems when reading about dogs, it's more a theology.

This newsletter will present a critical survey of all types of thought concerning not only dogs, wolves, and canine behavior, but many other areas of science which have great bearing on the nature of our favorite animal companion, the dog.

The practical dividend of the material to be presented is that one will come to understand dogs better and will be able to realize a vast improvement in their dog's behavior and receptivity to training. I guarantee that as a direct result of In Phase, a reader's appreciation and enjoyment of dogs will grow immeasurably.

Newsletter is available for $30 for 4 issues.