Caught on camera about a year ago: A young girl in a red jacket is walking alone down an alley. A small dog steps into view and watches her from a distance. A few seconds later, a silver compact sedan enters the alley behind her. The girl doesn’t see the car until it pulls right up next to her. Suddenly the front passenger door opens and a person gets out and starts moving toward her. The girl steps back in obvious fear.

Turning toward the scene, the dog starts barking. Then a second dog appears in the alleyway, far behind but trotting toward her. The sedan then backs up to get to her again. But the second dog is now speeding into the scene. The car door opens again, but this dog lunges toward the opening door, eyes focused on the person, jumping and barking. The door shuts and as the sedan drives away the agitated barking dog runs with it. Once the car is gone, the girl hurries quickly away, the first dog watching as she goes.

What caused Dog 1 to take special interest and the rescue dog, Dog 2, to charge in to defend the girl? Video comments offer a variety of explanations —the dogs were guardian angels, agents of the divine, man’s best friends, or perhaps just independently motivated to stop something bad.

The Suite of Canine Instincts

Cynics might dismiss the dogs’ actions, saying “they just follow their instincts,” thinking that their explanation erases all mystery from the story. On the contrary!

An instinct is an inherited pattern of behavior that animals exhibit without prior learning or instruction. It isn’t learned; rather, the animal grows into it.

Dogs’ well-known instincts include pack behavior, defending territory, hunting and foraging, guarding, digging, chewing, herding, howling/barking especially to alert others or fight, finding a den, scent marking, mating, burying items, circling before lying down, and chasing moving objects.

These common instincts advance individual survival and reproduction and sometimes serve the pack or “family” of the dog.

Instincts to Protect a Human?

Which instincts could account for the two dogs’ helping the girl? Initially, Dog 1 took an interest in the girl as she walked in the alley. Chalk that up first to defending territory. When the sedan came up behind her, Dog 1 turned more attention to the unfolding scene. When the door opened and the girl backtracked defensively, Dog 1 started barking. The barking could alert members of its family or pack to a potential problem.

At about that same moment, Dog 2 is seen trotting from further away in the alley directly to ground zero. Yes, Dog 2 could be instinctively chasing cars but it had not been chasing the sedan before. The car isn’t food and it is moving steadily away from both dogs. So neither dog has a clear instinctual drive to get involved with the human vs. human (or car) event.

Do the dogs— especially Rescue Dog 2— consider the girl part of the pack? If so, then Dog 2 was prompted by pack member Dog 1’s body language and barking and determined the girl was in conflict with intruders.

As the sedan backed up to grab the girl, Dog 2 inserted himself with physical aggression and constant barking. Clearly, Dog 2 was looking for an angle to successfully fight the intruder. Dog 2’s behavior plays out the guardian instinct. In seconds, the humans called off their intended assault and possible kidnapping, driving the sedan away with Dog 2 pursuing to complete the defense.   

No “Mere” Instincts

Does this instinct-based explanation make the dogs’ rescuing the girl all very expected? Not a marvel of animal-human love, caring, and self-sacrifice? Just instincts, nothing special?

Hardly. Each instinct displays a complex of interwoven sequential procedures, all designed to achieve a goal. Consider Dog 2’s sequence of necessary analysis and decisions in basic terms:

1. Respond to Dog 1’s barking.
2. Observe the girl-sedan interaction starting.
3. Identify the girl as a member of the pack or family.
4. Identify the alley way as territory within the defense perimeter.
5. Identify the sedan and its activities as an intruder and danger.
6. Implicitly decide to defend the territory, defend a pack or family member, and chase the intruder. (Dog 1 did not make the same decision.)
7. Engage full body operations to trot and then gallop toward the identified intruder, itself a moving target of unknown capabilities.
8. Thrust its body into the scene, bare teeth, bark and jump aggressively, all with eyes directly upon the sedan and the human intruder.
9. Continue the defensive activities until the intruder left, then continuing the chase to complete the defense.

Each of these actions seem easy to describe in one sentence. Try writing software to achieve these actions on computer hardware. Can’t code? Then write it out in English as a series of concrete detailed steps that can be converted into code.

Such a massive project would include, to name just a few functions: object identification, multiple object tracking, threat detection, navigation and interception, and other-entity intentions deduced from actions.  Writing such software first requires painstaking care and then operational testing.

A Mind That Cares

Nobody knows how instinctive information develops in a dog, or where it is stored, or how it is fetched, decoded, or executed. Nobody knows how it is modified physically by the dog’s experience or other training. In both their origins and execution, however, we know these dogs’ behaviors show purpose, plan, engineering and foresight.

Alert Dog 1 and Rescue Dog 2 acted in ways that together saw the girl in danger and reacted quickly and aggressively to drive away the threat to her. Were they guardian angels? Or perhaps innately designed to observe and react to protect? Either way, an awesome intelligence intervened to prevent a likely horror.