[QuickSilver]

I saw the show in which you are speaking, but I'm against using medications to treat, until other methods have failed, and there was no training attempted, medication was the first choice. Also she didn't give the name of the medication, but said it would take several weeks to have an effect, and this means it was not a typical tranquilizer, but an antidepressant, and again, I don't think these should be given lightly, except as a last resort.

Well, that's a matter of opinion. How do you feel about antidepressants in humans? I happen to find it very interesting that many mood medications work just as well on animals as they do on humans. Whether it's good or bad it is a NEW area, not an old one.

The psychology she used was not in her training methods, but just to explain to the client how the dog felt. I think we've known for a long time animals have feeling of loss. Her training methods are strict behaviorism with food as the reward, and enticer, not that I'm against this, it's an easy way of training certain things.

People keep saying this, and I don't get it. Victoria uses sound aversion, body blocking, modeling, negative reinforcement, desensitization, all KINDS of things. She is not just always handing out treats. I would say her methods are behaviorism based, but that doesn't mean they are OLD - they are new applications based on earlier research. I would not call Victoria a "dog psychologist", but saying that a dog feels rejected by its owner is NOT behaviorism.

I'm not sure what you mean by this question, "Third, I see so many people saying about Cesar "dogs just need to know what you like and don't like." How is this psychology?" I have never made that statement, and I don't understand what it's in reference to, furthermore, I don't know what you mean by, "How is this psychology?".

Look through this thread and the Cesar thread, and you will see people saying these things. It is simplifying dogs into "Good/Bad" machines, not saying anything about their thoughts, reasoning abilities, instincts, emotions, or anything else.

You say, " Human psychology is a whole other ball of wax." When you study psychology, you aren't really studying humans; you are studying behavior in general. Freudian and Humanist psychology, of course, are thought to have applied only to humans, but I really like the idea, that some of these things can possibly be applied to animals. The experiments that produced the laws of behavior were made on animals, many different species, and humans as well. So, Behaviorism applies to all organisms. Comparative psychology studies the difference between species, but these differences are not in the rules of behavior, but what works as a reinforcer or cue. I think Cesar's newness is that he found a new reinforcer for dogs; food and praise that has long been thought as the only reinforcers for dogs, and Cesar believes that if you can make a dog be in this certain state of mind, that this would be the reinforcer. So this is really new, to me anyway.

You brought up different schools of psychology to compare schools of thought on training. I think this is a false analogy, because frankly, there is a much greater scientific basis in animal training, partly because it's easier to analyze a species that's not your own, and partly because we can do many experiments on observations with animals we can't do with humans. I would say the greatest advancements we've made in human learning recently have come from the animal world.

I'm not sure why Victoria's use of reinforcement is "old" and Cesar's is "new". Looking at Cesar's shows, I see a lot of submissive dogs, but I think that has nothing to do one way or the other with whether they are calm.