Dog Behaviorists - Page 4

I am not sure I understand Hired Dog.

"Can someone show me a DOG, not an animal behaviorist?"   This thread is about Dog Behaviorists and not dogs specifically.   Can you explain in more detail what you are looking for here?

"After a life time dealing with and training dogs for a life time, I still cant train a horse...have only actually been on one 3 times in my life...what makes me an expert in that field?"   This is true.  Are you looking for something more?

 

A PhD is a piece of paper worth only as much as the institution that issued it, and even at that does not equate into any real ability.
Through my years of experience i have come to hold little respect for a piece paper framed on a wall.
What I respect is a long successful career of proving ones abilities.
 

Make sense Hired Dog.  Thanks for the clarification.  I, too, question the piece of paper many behaviorist have (what made the instructor qualified, what animal (s) did they study/specialize in).

For me, I am more referring to the behaviorist that have canine as their specialty.

Ha, ha, this again. The ole' Academics versus Know-how discussion.  To Two Moons last post:
 

A PhD is a piece of paper worth only as much as the institution that issued it, and even at that does not equate into any real ability.
Through my years of experience i have come to hold little respect for a piece paper framed on a wall.
What I respect is a long successful career of proving ones abilities.

The piece of paper, pending on granting institution of course, allows the PhD holder, when employed by a University or Research/Think Tank, to apply for public and/or private sector issued research grants or funding that a "know-how" person is ineligible to apply for regardless of their superior "hands-on" ability or current employment .  It is also the minimum requirement to hold a tenure track or full-time postilion at many universities and think-tanks (again both private owned and public).  It is also the minimum requirement to get book deals under certain academic publishers.  So, yes it serves a financial & professional purpose to have earned one or planning/aspiring to get one, even if someone has lots of know-how under their belt.

So, though I agree that proving ones abilities should be the number one issue, we now live in a credential based society that has been forced on all of us.  That won't stop a great trainer from getting many clients and having a successful consulting dog training business, but without the credentials it will bar that same person from proving academics wrong or going toe-to-toe with them in the larger policy discussions.  In fact I would argue thats one of the reasons why so much bull crap gets published and/or put into law because the people with know-how seem to think they can completely avoid the credential game, not realizing they will never get a seat at the table until they do get into the credential game.
 

There are NO strictly dog behaviorists out there, other then the qualified trainers I mentioned during my first post. No school offers DOG behavior degrees out there...I spoke to UC Davies abut this several years a go.
Nope, I am not looking for anything more, other then more knowledge of course, in my areas of interest.

This above post by, Hired Dog, right here, is what I am talking about.  Without writing a thesis to clarify, why, how, etc, ALL people studying animal behavior need a grounding in animal Ethology and biology.  You won't get to the "dog specific stuff" until you get that out of the way.  And if you think your should be able to get around it, you have no business attempting it because in the end you will be both frustrated and humiliated.

I'll give an example of how someone would go about focusing on Canines in a Masters or Doctorate program. Duke's anthropology department has faculty that have gained some large research grants for thier research in the well publicized Dog Cognition Center.  If you were an anthropology grad student at Duke or in another germane discipline in the same school, you could try to become research assistant for one of the professors working in the Canine Cognition Center.  But like a real J-O-B you need to APPLY and get accepted by one of those faculty members, sure you can take classes from them that may have a Canine theme, but its nothing like being an RA in the Dog Cognition Center.  Here are some who made that cut, but still may not earn thier PhD at the end of the day, just a Masters:

http://evolutionaryanthropology.duke.edu/research/dogs/people/graduate-students

http://evolutionaryanthropology.duke.edu/people?Gurl=%2Faas%2FBAA&Uil=christopher.krupenye&subpage=profile

This is all just the tip of iceberg, but as I tried to illustrate, the degree and coursework need not be specifically labeled "canine" to get hands-on canine based field work in a University.  Thats were the general ethology, zoology and biology come in.

Read up:

http://evolutionaryanthropology.duke.edu/research/dogs/research

You can even apply to an internship there in the summer to see for yourself what those "Pesky ol' academics are doin' with all that free time off in the summers":

http://evolutionaryanthropology.duke.edu/uploads/media_items/summer-2014-internship-announcement.original.pdf

FYI another clear as day article on the subject:

https://www.patriciamcconnell.com/theotherendoftheleash/whos-doing-research-on-canine-cognition
 

Re: horses and dog training

I have trained both horses and dogs, and the horse training experience helped my dog training, but not really vice versa. Sure, horses are prey animals and dogs are predators. But, they are both animals and animals all learn in generally the same ways, even if some of their motivations and instinctual responses are different. I could go into detail on how horse training experience translates well to dog training, but I think this is a dog board and people aren't too interested ;-) VKGSDS did hit on one aspect of it.

Thank you all for your input.  This is a good conversation that I appreciate the input.  Keep the thoughts coming. 

One of the big similarities is learning to interpret and use the animal's own body language to communicate with it.  When I read Monty Robert's The Horse Whisperer, I was surprised to find I'd been doing that for years, without being aware of it!