Maple
Maple is a 4-year-old adult herding dog. She's wired to control movement: circling, gathering, heading things off. When she manages running kids or dogs, that's instinct doing its job. She treats the household as her to organise: moving people along, checking on everyone, inserting herself. She acts as a principal in the flock. Fast movement (bikes, runners, skateboards) pulls a reaction before thinking catches up. She winds up fast and can struggle to come back down on her own: the engine revs easily and idles poorly.
Breed instinct, tested against Maple
What the breed predicts vs. what you actually saw. The tick is the breed's bet; the bar is Maple.
2 overturned
How Maple's mind works
Nine dimensions, scored by how confidently your observations have read each one.
dimensions
The reads that matter most
She's wired to control movement: circling, gathering, heading things off. When she manages running kids or dogs, that's instinct doing its job.
She treats the household as her to organise: moving people along, checking on everyone, inserting herself. She acts as a principal in the flock.
Why Maple does that
Everyday behaviours, translated from dog into meaning.
Prey drive: overruled by behaviour
Breed instinct pointed to prey drive, but Maple's behaviour says otherwise. Observation overrides the prior here.
One-person bond: overruled by behaviour
Breed instinct pointed to one-person bond, but Maple's behaviour says otherwise. Observation overrides the prior here.
Herding drive
She's wired to control movement: circling, gathering, heading things off. When she manages running kids or dogs, that's instinct doing its job.
The manager
She treats the household as her to organise: moving people along, checking on everyone, inserting herself. She acts as a principal in the flock.
Motion-reactive
Fast movement (bikes, runners, skateboards) pulls a reaction before thinking catches up.
High arousal, hard off-switch
She winds up fast and can struggle to come back down on her own: the engine revs easily and idles poorly.
Strengthen your bond
Practices shaped to Maple's exact profile.
Drive Stack
Give her a real outlet for control: herding-style games, recall-to-heel, directional cues.
Bond Map
Give her a sanctioned 'job' so the managing has an outlet that you control.
Threat Lens
Work distance and 'look at that' games to change the emotional response to movement.
Grounded in your observations, not guesswork
Breed instinct seeds a hypothesis; Maple's actual behaviour, as you observe it, is the truth that overrides it. Pawfile states how sure it is per dimension. It describes behaviour and never replaces hands-on care: sudden changes point you to a vet, and aggression or severe anxiety to a behaviourist.