DR. Ann Yowell DVM

Senses and Instincts of the dog

        Your dog has a personality that is based upon one of four instincts. He/She also has three unique senses that are used in everyday life. The three basic senses are smell, hearing and sight. Dogs are born with four behavior drives called instincts, they are the pack drive, prey drive, defensive drive and flight drive.

          A dogs sense of smell is 1000 to 10, 000 times more sensitive than a humans. A dogs sense of smell is the most acute sense he/she has. Dogs communicate with each other and the world through odors. To a dog scent is a three dimensional odor image that provides them with more detail than a photograph does for humans.

          The acute hearing of dogs is far superior to humans. They can easily hear high pitched sounds that humans can not hear. Our hearing is limited to sounds in the 20 to 20,000 hertz range. Frequencies greater than 20,000 hertz are called ultrasound - humans can not hear those frequencies but dogs can hear frequencies up to 67,000 hertz.

          Due to their wide set eyes dogs have a vision field of 250 degrees, while our field of view is only 180 degrees. This makes them far superior to us in detecting movement. Dogs are less visually acute than humans, making it harder for them to determine fine details. A dog needs to be within 20 feet of an object to see it clearly. They also have difficulty focusing on objects closer than one foot from their eyes. For objects very close, they have to rely on their sense of smell, hearing or taste for identification. Dogs do have color vision, but few color receptors in the eye, they primarily see colors in shade of blue and yellow. They are better in differentiating subtle shades of gray which helps with their low light vision. Dogs see much better in dim light than we do.

          The pack drive comes from the dogs desire to live with a group of family members, with the family members being humans or other dogs. Each pack is headed by a leader, which is called the Alpha. A properly socialized dog accepts it's owner as the pack leader. When a dog recognizes the owner as his pack leader, his strongest desire is to please the "leader".

           The prey drive comes from the need for the dog to hunt for food. Pet's don't need this drive to provide themselves with food, but we still see this drive in their daily actions, such as chasing balls, stalking toy's and chasing cars.

           The defense or "guard" drive is a dogs inherited need to protect his/her territory. Dogs with a strong defense drive are self confident, stand their ground, guard their territory, family and sometimes their food and toys.

           The flight drive is most often seen in timid dogs. They are unsure of new situations, are stressed if away from their pack (or owner), may have submissive urination and become fear biters.