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Dog Behavior: When Dogs Display Allelomimetic (Be Like/Act Like) Behavior
This genetic behavioral term has been defined as "doing what other animals in a group do, with some degree of mutual stimulation." 12 Puppies who join a 2-legged human pack during the 3 to 14-week primary socialization period tend to "bond" with their people. On the other hand, puppies who associate only with other dogs until 14 weeks are difficult to socialize to people. If socialization is left until later, extreme difficulty is encountered. Most such dogs display either exaggerated excitability, fearfully trying to avoid human contact (active defense reflex, flight type), or its opposite, freezing into a state of catatonia in some cases (passive defense reflex).
Many of these dogs can be socialized quite successfully in a carefully managed program using well-socialized adult dogs or puppies as "bridges." This provides a canine behavioral model relative to people, as well as social competition for people as a source of care-giving behavior, such as petting, praise and feeding, and satisfying care-seeking behavior.
On a purely visual basis, most well-socialized dogs seem to perceive people standing alongside each other as "being friendly." The dog will generally behave friendly as well. On the other hand, when the dog sees the owner face to face with a stranger, the scene tends to be interpreted a confrontation. The side-by-side stance will be used later in sections on aggression, biting and over-protection. Many dogs also interpret as confrontational a frontal approach by people, even children. For this reason it is always prudent to stand sideways when meeting strange dogs.
One of a dog's most endearing traits is how it responds to human emotions. It is not as important to explain all the ways dogs sense this, as it is to recognize that they do respond, some to a greater degree than others. Just as individual wolves in a pack have different, identifiable personalities, so the pack as a whole has a personality of its own.
This tendency to reflect the emotional state of the human group and then to respond in canine ways, chiefly toward social stimuli, was coined as the "Principle of Reflection." Both the concept and the term have received little scholarly attention. The term "reflection" may be ambiguous, but the phenomenon is evident to any dog owner or professional who works with people and pets. It parallels the sociology of human groups. This dimension of owner-dog relationships is indispensable in diagnosing and correcting most problems.
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