Assess, classify and respond

Assess, classify and respond is the most basic PIB and is used more often than any of the others. Dogs assess the creatures around them, classify them and then choose an instinctive response appropriate for that classification and situation. The basic classifications are:
1) Food.
2) Foes.
3) Friends.
4) Potential friends.
5) Unknown.

Food are the creatures that provide a nutritional resource; prey. Foes are threats, challengers, competitors or intruders. In other words, any creature that could threaten the well-being of the pack. Friends are the creatures that share the dog’s day-to-day struggle for survival; the pack. Potential friends are creatures outside of the pack that pose no particular threat and may be suitable to join the pack. Unknown is self-explanatory.

These classifications are instinctive and not subject to change. If subordinate male and female members of the pack decide to mate, they will be driven from the pack to start their own pack. The original pack cannot classify them as ‘used to be friends.” They become a pack competing for resources and must be classified as foes.

When a dog has chosen how to classify a creature, it then has access to a group of instinctive behavioral responses to that classification. A dog that is always friendly and charming to the family it survives with can become an aggressive threat to someone it classifies as a foe, such as a mail carrier or a meter reader. The instinctive response for foes is to drive them away aggressively, or fight until they leave or are defeated.

Many people believe their dogs become temporarily insane at the sight of other people entering the dog’s territory. That isn’t true. The dog is displaying an instinctive response to someone it has instinctively classified as a threat. So here is the statement that defines the entire purpose of this blog:

When a dog is displaying instinctive behavioral patterns, the dog is lacking instructions from a higher authority within the pack!

Dogs can rely on three informational sources to govern their own behavior:

1) Instructions from a more dominant member of the pack.
2) Learned behaviors that have been taught by a more dominant member of the pack.
3) Instinctive behaviors that are appropriate for living with a canine pack in the wild.

A dog that displays instinctive responses hasn’t been convinced that the humans in the pack are of higher status and have the right to direct the dog’s behavior, or the dog hasn’t been instructed in ways the dog can understand.