Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 February 1885 — A Dog’s Instinct. [ARTICLE]

A Dog’s Instinct.

The dog’s instinct of guarding property is a purely artificial instinct, created by man for his own purposes; and it is now so strongly ingrained in the intelligence of the dog that it is unusual to find any individual animal in which it is wholly absent. Thus, we know without any training a dog will allow a stranger to pass by his master’s gate without molestation; but that as soon as the stranger passes within the gate, and so trespasses on what the dog knows to be his master’s territory, the animal immediately begins to bark in order to give his master notice of the invasion. And this lea ls me to observe that barking is itself an artificial instinct, developed, I believe, as an offshoot from the more general instinct of guarding property. None of the wild species of dog are known to bark, and there we must conclude that barking is an artificial instinct, acquired for the purpose of notifying to his master the presence of thieves or enemies. I may further observe that this instinct of guarding extends to the formation of an instinctive idea on the part of the animal of itself constituting part of the property. If, for instance, a friend give you temporary charge of his dog, even although the dog may never have seen you before, observing that you are hi 3 master’s friend, and that his master intends you to take charge of him, he immediately transfers his allegiance from his master to you, as to a deputed owner, and will then follow you through any number of crowded streets with the utmost confidence. Thus, whether we look to the negative or to the positive influence of domestication upon the psychology .of the dog, we must conclude that a change has been wrought, so profound that the whole mental constitution of the animal now presents a more express reference to the needs of another and his enslaving animal than it does to his own. Indeed, we may say that there is no one feature in the whole psychology of the dog which has been left unaltered by the influence of man, except those instincts which, being neither useful nor harmful to man, have never been subject to his operation— for instance, as the instinct of burying food, turning round to make a bed before lying down, etc Century.