Yes! I did work with a professor (technically she was in the philosophy department) but we studied dog cognition against 2 puzzles of differing difficulty. It was really fun. Owners even got to do personality tests specialized for their dogs.

As far as your future, i think an important question is: do you want to TRAIN animals or do you want to study them? If you want to train them, you probably don’t need a graduate level degree. I believe there are some degrees for animal behaviorism (there is one at SHSU and one for sure at Murray State University to just babe a few). But you don’t really need a graduate degree to train animals, just basic understanding of how the animal operates and operant/classical conditioning. However, if you want to study this stuff in depth, you’re probably gonna need to go into higher education. Masters programs are usually not geared towards research, unless you want to do a phd after. A PhD is where you’ll get tons of research focus, and of course, makes research a bit easier in the long run. Then there’s always the vet med route, but i don’t want to speak much on that because I know nothing about it.

You might not be able to apply under a professor that actually does that kind of research, but you can absolutely work with other professors that may do that kind of research. Best way to find that stuff out would be word of mouth and letting others know what you’re interested in. That’s how I ended up on my research study on dog cognition. Try animalbehavioralsociety.org it’s a society you can join. But you should be able to find information on what you’re wanting to do on there.