A dog is a dog, right? Not here. When traditional trainers look at a dog, they see a dog. Great.
When Nature built dogs, though, She didn’t build them to operate as a single entity. Nature designed them as a set of interconnecting systems, gathering together three, unique parts to work together. In every dog’s spaceship there are three separate participants:
- the physical dog
- the non-physical brain (things unique to each and every other dog)
- the non-physical mind (the things all dogs have, now, or respond to)
We’re going to be wrestling a bit with the English language. How can I identify traditional trainer’s understanding of “the dog,” from Nature’s construction of “the dog?”
Traditional Training and The Dog
From this point on, anywhere the text reads “the dog,” it means traditional training’s understanding of all three wrapped into one.
Nature and Her Three Participants
When I’m referring to the three parts as already outlined in the wiki entry for Three Parts of Every Dog, I’ll use the individual terms
- the physical dog. or go to the page showing the ranges of different dogs.
- the non-physical brain, and
- the non-physical mind.
When I’m talking about all three in the package, together, at once, I’ll always refer to it in a longer phrase “the package we call the dog,” or “the dog package,” or “the whole dog.”
Traditional training calls it “the dog” (with the implied understanding that “traditional trainers group all three together, they don’t acknowledge it, nor do they talk about it”)
I’ll refer to Nature’s model as “the package we call the dog,” or “the dog package,” or “the whole dog.” The longer phrase implies the more thorough perception of our understanding of a more complex dog with three participants.
Traditional training looks at a dog and sees a dog: Nature’s model, and the model promoted by The DOuGTrainer, understands the existence of the three parts mentioned. Those additional parts or levels, plus the reader’s awarenesses and the dog’s owner’s awarenesses (or not) of those levels, will be what contributes to their expanded abilities in becoming and being their dog’s better and best leader possible. It’s an inside job.