HCP week
For my HCP, I decided to write about canine cognition and cognitive ethology, as well as the domestication of dogs. To start my essay, I believed it was important to distinguish between primary and secondary emotions, where primary emotions serve as basic survival instincts and secondary emotions are examples of higher level cognitive abilities, such as thinking about certain emotions and choosing how to react to them. I tried to emphasize that all animals were capable of primary emotions, as they are essential for survival; however, it was difficult to emphasize how domesticated dogs displayed examples of secondary emotion, especially following the study conducted by Horowitz and Hecht.
While I was unsure how to tie my HCP to the issue I would like to write about in the advocacy essay, I believe I was able to effectively tie the two together; I'm concerned that this portion of my essay is too long, but I wanted to make sure I was thorough in explaining how the two essays would connect.
I believe my strengths in my HCP are that I was able to move between sources effectively and lead them into each other; my weaknesses are that I don't know if I went deep enough into the studies to accurately reflect the historical conversation regarding canine cognition and cognitive ethology. For my revision process, I believe it will be necessary to focus on editing my citations to make sure my sources are accurately cited and I should try to summarize, quote, and/or paraphrase more clearly to get the main ideas of the studies across to my audience. The most challenging thing about writing this draft was that it was difficult to focus on which direction I wanted to take the HCP and to balance the conversation between specifying what type of emotion was being questioned (primary v. secondary emotion). I was afraid that by including certain studies or taking the essay a certain direction would make it sound like I was arguing that animals did not have emotions; by including Bekoff's studies, I believe I was able to establish that all mammals had the capacity to feel the basic primary emotions, like fear, anger, sadness, and happiness. Working on this HCP has definitely improved my skim-reading skills and has helped me with finding credible sources; before this class, I had been relying solely on Google Scholar articles. While there are many good studies, I believe I missed out on articles in scientific journals and textbooks that I could only find through ANTPAC and the UCI library search. I will definitely utilize and evolve these skills for future essays and research papers.
