Peter De Smidt responds:


You might make it
less likely that your dog will attack others, but will you totally
remove that urge? I doubt it.

Consider Siegfried and Roy. Clearly they trained and socialized their
animals much, much more than the average dog owner, but nonetheless
tragedy struck. Training can mitigate inborn tendencies, but that's not
the same thing as removing them.



Charlie Self wrote:

Sorry. The analogy doesn't work. Tigers are NOT dogs and no attempt has ever
been made to domesticate them.

snip

I never claimed that tigers are dogs. My point was that socialization
and training do not remove inborn tendencies, and my example
demonstrates that. Behavioral training and socialization of tigers,
dogs, hawks (which I've done), killer whales,..., are all very similar,
and use well established behavioral conditioning, even though the
specific inborn tendencies are quite different.

But in any case we seem to agree on the overall point.

-Peter De Smidt