This is long overdue. I have often marvelled at our desire to discover alien life forms from outer space. We wonder what they would be like and would we be able to communicate with them. We have something very much like that in the animals on this planet. We need to learn to communicate with them and to respect them. Are they any less valuable or interesting that alien creatures on another planet?

When you get a chance, drop by my blog. Several odd animal conditioning entries and one “Cat Conditions Psychologist!” They don’t have insurance so I couldn’t bill anyone. That may be next, though.

I am reminded of the film ‘The Horse Whisperer’recently shown on TV featuring a traumatized horse with severe anxiety and it’s subsequent cure. Very moving.

I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Van Nuys on this subject. I cannot believe how long it has taken for people (supposedly very smart and educated people!) to realize that our animal companions have many of the same emotions and sensitivities that we humans pride ourselves on having. I feel that one reason for the long delay is that some humans feel threatened, for some reason, by the similarities between “lower animals” (I hate that phrase!!) and ourselves. We sometimes don’t seem to have come very far from the ideas of an idiot (yes, I said “idiot”) like Rene Descartes who kicked his own dog and shrugged off a friend’s protest by opining that the poor dog was no more than an automaton expressing some sort of mindless “reflex”. This while the poor animal was howling in pain and no doubt an acute sense of betrayal. My own professors in psychology, while kind people and probably decent pet owners, turned absolutely apoplectic if anyone tried to ascribe “human” emotions to cats, dogs, horses, monkeys, or anything else lower on the evolutionary scale than our own sensitive selves. I say it’s many years late in coming (but very welcome) to see that our fellow animals are being recognized for the intelligent, sensitive, and sentient beings that they are.