

Dogs are people, too - schuke
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/dogs-are-people-too.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&hp&pagewanted=print

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jerrytsai
This article demonstrates the difficulty of animal science and neurological
science. How much can we infer from brain scans from creatures whose ability
to communicate with humans is quite limited?

Through my experience as a dog owner (er, dog guardian), I am convinced that
dogs experience emotion and are capable of some deductive reasoning. Yet they
are generally incapable of comprehending the entire human world around them.
It's as if you perpetually have a two-year-old's brain in a furry, four-legged
adult's body.

While the author argues that dogs should be treated more like people, e.g.,
with the freedom to choose what they will or will not do, he fails to note the
opposite tack-- that the choices of two-year-olds must be constrained at times
for their own safety and well-being and that the behavior of dogs and two-
year-olds is modified-- often for their benefit-- through the use of positive
and negative reinforcement.

Only if we could gain more thorough understanding of the emotions that dogs
experience can we make good decisions of how they best should be treated.

