Some behaviors in dogs are built in. They are there from generations of breeding. These behaviors don’t require dog training to initiate. They show up when something triggers them.
For example, I had a Dobermann named Bouchard who visited a friend’s house several times before he noticed the waves against the sea wall in her back yard were something to chase. Once that drive to chase the waves was triggered, he would run back and forth on the sea wall for as long as I let him. This made me a nervous wreck, however, because if he fell in, I’d have to rescue him. I’m not that fond of water or that athletic.
Well, that never happened, but the behavior of chasing the waves was a behavior that was pre-installed in Bouchard. Chasing is a predation behavior and all dogs have a certain amount of predation installed. The behavior was waiting for something to trigger it, and that’s what the waves did. Though chasing waves was not useful for anything but exercising, the pre-installed predatory behavior would have been useful to Bouchard in the case that he were a free roaming dog. But he found another way to use that internal seed once it blossomed.
The same thing happened in the video below. One day, Bouchard started covering his feces. Just out of the blue, something triggered the behavior, and after that, he occasionally swiped his nose over dirt to bury his droppings. Another behavior that popped up along the way was poop eating. Coprophagia Two behaviors that were turned on inside him, pre-installed and activated, that were passed down to him from previous ancestors, but really not relevant to his life as a pet dog. But the packages are such that we dog owners deal with what our dogs have pre-installed when the time comes.
By Helen Verte
Certified Pet Dog Trainer-Knowledge Assessed, Certified Trick Dog Instructor
Dog Behavior Expertise, Broward County Florida, Fort Lauderdale
