Yes but those dogs choose to either do alpha or beta behavior. It’s not immutable and fixed. Alpha dogs can become beta dogs, beta dogs can become alpha dogs.
There are so many things animals do that are totally their choice that nothing is influencing them to do, it’s not just behavior they can’t help but do. If you’ve ever caught a glimpse of an animal on its own being happy and expressing it their own way, there’s no force causing them to have to behave that way. Same with affection returned to you. Sometimes it’s flopping down next to you. Sometimes it’s a little happy noise. Sometimes it’s grooming. They’re not forced to do that by anyone. ANd not all do things the same way, they have different habits and likes and dislikes. And you begin to see the uniqueness and individuality of them as you know them better.
And as far as the puppy example, I think you’ve just tanked your argument. For one thing I think you go way too far saying it’s just alpha behavior AND NOTHING MORE. You have no way of proving that, and I believe from my own experiences with animals the last 40 years that is totatlly wrong. That’s biochemical absolutism, no choice but to act that way thinking. Not true.
Let’s say the puppy can’t choose anyone. Certainly he can’t verbalize “I want to be your dog.” But the dog has made choices. He went up to you when he didn’t have to. The cases in shelters exist all the time where an animal doesn’t respond to anyone except a certain person. People who deal with lots of different animals of the same kind, are able to determine right away what’s unique and individual about animals that come in, how they react to different people. Of course some of that is from past experience but past experience doesn’t explain ALL of their uniqueness and individual likes and dislikes, habits, and behaviors. Same with us too, environment has an impact but that’s not the ONLY thing that can affect us.
I believe as far as domestic pets go, we generally choose them before they choose us. We love them before they are secure and trusting us enough to be affectionate back to us. That doesn’t mean they don’t have unique ‘animalities’. They all have their own spirit. The life (nephesh) of the body is in the blood. They too were all designed initially not to die. Each one has their own spirit, their own unique spirit. Contained in that unique spirit is their unique individuality. The fact we choose them first doesn’t mean that isn’t true that they don’t have their own unique individuality that allowed them to walk over to us, and make an impression on us. Did he actually choose us? I don’t think you can say 100 percent no. He might have. He might have just come by because of a scent, or what we were wearing, or we reminded him of someone who was nice. But he still made the choice to walk over when he didn’t have to. And all the other ones could have walked over if they wanted to, but didn’t.
Think about how it is with God and us. God chooses us before we choose Him. God loves us before we love Him. We know all of our human natures are sinful and as such, are opposed to Him and anything about Him, from our very beginnings. Our natural instincts are to run away from God, to reject God. Man cannot choose God without God helping Him. Regardless of our unique personalities, the one thing in common we all have is that by nature we’d all reject God and the things of God. You want to talk about behavior that’s hardwired into us, it’s our human sin nature.
But that's all response to external stimuli...once my GSD died, my once passive Tervuren became far more assertive in his behavior, stepping up to fill a void...that behavior is, for lack of a better term, programmed.
Nowhere did I deny (in fact, if you look back, I affirm) that individual animals have their own, unique characteristics, and certainly they have learned behaviors with regards to different stimuli...two otherwise identical dogs may respond to a rattling chain entirely differently...for one it may be an indicator that he's about to go for a walk, and for another, it may suggest he's about to get thrashed. That the two dogs react "differently" is not a "personality" trait, but a learned behavior that is entirely consistent with the "dogness" of their being.
Look...I'm done arguing this point. It takes a lot of work and humility to see the world through the eyes of another creature. It's lazy and vain to attribute to them uniquely human characteristics to simplify our interaction with them...it's the Disney approach, and it makes for fine entertainment, but it's not appreciating the animals for the way God made them, but rather the way we as humans wish to engage them on our terms and in the easily understood vocabulary of our uniquely human psychology.
You are perfectly free to choose the latter. IMHO, it's disrespectful to the animal as you're not engaging it on it's terms for all that is simple and complex about the way it was created, but rather you are engaging it with human attributes as you wish to see it....but hey...go for it.