“It’s in His Walk” http://bit.ly/cA9Jx7

The primary disparity is in the form, the dog responds to the discrepancy via instinct and so cannot pick up the subtler “preyful aspects” of the persons’ body language and in particular scent. Then movement of the form can amplify the shock. Finally, the dogs’ barking can bring a person’s fear/intentions to the surface and so this too can add gas to the fire.
There are also occasions when the dog smells and then erupts into barking; however this is a more refined elaboration of the same phenomenon. When the dog became grounded with the smell, nonetheless the connection is still weak, like a poor electrical contact, and now all of a sudden this can’t carry the surge of the strong emotional pull the dog now feels toward the stranger by virtue of smelling him, and so the template (which barely fit to begin with) no longer fits in terms of this increased load and so the dog all of a sudden sees the stranger moving fast.

2) Later in a dog’s life, are templates still formed? For example, if a 5 year old dog has never seen a horse before (but has seen a deer), would the dog apply the “deer template” simply because it’s the closest thing to that form? Would a new template form for something entirely novel like a snake?

Everything has an energetic signature and so the first experience gives the dog an imprint, it’s like the immune system getting the shape of a foreign pathogen from the first exposure. A horse has a much stronger predatory component than a deer and the dog will be able to discern the distinction, although distance has a mitigating influence. The farther away; the greater the prey value in the mix, so a horse running at a distance would appear more deer-like and a deer-chasing-dog would probably chase it. However, when the dog got closer its prey-making mettle would be tested since it would have to deal with the shift in template now that they’re so close.
Temperament makes templates (an emotional value of predator relative to prey) and can do so at any age. The more supple the temperament: the more the emotional value of a preexisting form can change. So yes, a new template can form later in life in response to a brand new form and also emotional values assigned to any given form can gradually shift as well.
The form of every species has an innate and distinctive electromagnetic vibration (virtually speaking). A snake has a specific makeup but then on top of that there is the novelty factor in the dog’s experience and this will accentuate the snakes’ predatory aspect and the first imprint may more extreme for one dog than another. Also, if two dogs experience the same form at the same time, they will pickup a slightly different imprint by virtue of being an influence on the other so that they can fit together relative to that form. One will be the “up” polarity relative to the other as the “down” so to speak.

3) Last question: Can these templates alter over time? If a dog experiences a rush of predatory energy when first encountering a car, is the dog destined to *always* apply that same ratio of energy to every car it encounters even if all subsequent encounters with a car are lop-sided on the prey energy side of things?
The permanence of any given template depends on how much it gets energized. So in order to compose a new ratio, the dog must apprehend the energetic essence within the form and this works just like the sense of smell. In smell, each molecule has a distinctive electromagnetic value (within its form) given the chemical bonds and their angles, and yet the sense of smell can perfectly apprehend the energetic essence of a molecule it has never encountered before and even though this chemical may have been produced in a lab by some exotic process and has never before wafted into any animal’s nostrils over the course of the evolution of life on earth. So the prey/predator ratio can shift but there is a tendency towards permanence because the original imprint becomes the path of least resistance and so will tend to get reinforced with repeated energizing. So a wolf encounters a healthy moose and this forms an imprint. And then when it encounters a diseased moose, it can discern the distinction and pickup the essence of the vulnerable moose by way of a discrepancy.
I should also say that a horse could first be perceived as a predator, because it’s so large and perhaps scared the dog with a snort or stomp, however as the dog is around horses and is calmed by their prey energy, (and eats their manure) it begins to feel grounded and the prey value can come to be equal to the predator value in the ratio and then we say that such a dog loves horses. (It can work the other way as well, if the predatory aspect of a bunny comes to equal its far more pronounced preyful aspect, then the dog comes to love the bunny.)
If the underlying template doesn’t shift, then the dog’s affection is specific to a particular horse, or bunny, and in specific situations, rather than horses and bunnies in general and under any and all contexts.
In the case of the dog that comes to love horses, fear of the horse was converted via the hunger circuitry into a new value for the template. If this new template gets energized to a stronger degree then the old one, it will replace the old one in the emotional battery as path of least resistance. So if the prey value in the mix is roughly equal, but slightly greater than the predatory value, then we observe pure social energy.
This is also related to why we humans need to use praise, food and toys in order to up our prey quotient and help a dog feel attracted to us since we are such overwhelmingly predatory beings. Wolves don’t have to do this with other wolves, and dogs don’t have to do this with other dogs since they have a much higher prey component in their energetic signature. Thus when an alpha canine “disciplines” an omega, it’s much easier for the omega to feel grounded to the alpha despite that whooping as opposed to experiencing the same degree of interruption from a “dominant” human.
When a dog sees another dog on the horizon, the energetic signature at this distance is basically the same as seeing a deer because dogs have a four-legged rhythmic gait (prey) and with a big fluffy tail (in most cases) that waves in the air to boot. So dogs have a lot of prey value and this helps keep other dogs grounded to them.

4) And on a more general level, is this why dogs can form fearful or aggressive behavior towards objects that were once considered harmless/normal?

The last question is really interesting to me as I often hear of trainers using counter-conditioning and desensitization to help a dog with fears. In many cases the dog will make lots of progress but then revert back to the original fearful behavior suddenly– is this the dog returning to the original template that was formed?

Fear is ungrounded energy and therefore it can only be reinforced. Fear cannot be desensitized, calmed, allayed, forgotten as time goes by, gotten over, it can only be reinforced. Fearful dogs are very “hardened” in their fear. It’s like a callous over their temperament. So even when a dog with a fear imprint has a positive experience, this experience is stacked on top of the fear imprint and so the fear gets stronger, just as a building erected on a faulty foundation gets more and more out of whack the higher it goes. One indication that the dog is getting more fearful is that the dog is generating more and more personality, becoming more and more “friendly” in other contexts. Such dogs often can play with a toy by itself but this is actually the investment of a predatory aspect into the toy so that it becomes a Being with which the dog can now play. This is directly proportionally to the dog’s sensitivity to fear since it’s projecting a predatory value into these innocuous non-threatening situations just as its projecting a predatory value onto an inert toy.
Personality, while an adaptive coping mechanism; is really a defensive response, and is predicated on fear. (This is why young puppies are both fearless and have less personality. As they get older, their nervous systems become more complex and they acquire resistance and fear, and they manifest more and more personality. In other words, personality is a vibration of the battery but not a true movement of deep energy.) So the more successful the dog is with its personality, the more its fear is being reinforced.
In the short term it can look like the dog is getting better as its personality can glide over short interrupts in consciousness (like scooting itself over the slippery floor problem) but this is always adding up and sooner or later fear reaches critical mass in the battery and the higher process of the nervous system must invent an object for the fear to be vented toward in order to discharge the battery and find relief. Fear follows the path of least resistance and so often the invention will be a familiar template from way back when. We have to get below personality and create a new template by appealing directly through the temperament and changing the prey/predator ratios.
Unless a new template is created that can carry more energy than the old template can relieve, the fear will return. To resolve fear, it must be turned back into that from which it came, i.e. a desire that collapsed. The good news is that desire feels better than fear. In my view, only hunger can turn fear back into desire, and since desire is energy of attraction that is based on hunger/arousal; unlike fear it can be satisfied. So if a dog will take food or bite an object in a fear inducing moment, the energy is becoming grounded and it is on the way to acquiring a new template.
I should also say that fear of some object or place was really an invention of the nervous system to justify a download. Usually, the specific circumstances were not the real cause but merely the excuse and represented an opportunity to download. This is why it’s so important to help the dog move its energy by overcoming resistance.

In your example of a dog having 200k volts of attraction to a stranger, but no feeling– what is the primary cause for the disparity between the internal template and the actual being? Is it the physical form, scent, the person’s intentions, or does it all play a part?

Later in a dog’s life, are templates still formed? For example, if a 5 year old dog has never seen a horse before (but has seen a deer), would the dog apply the “deer template” simply because it’s the closest thing to that form? Would a new template form for something entirely novel like a snake?

Last question: Can these templates alter over time? If a dog experiences a rush of predatory energy when first encountering a car, is the dog destined to *always* apply that same ratio of energy to every car it encounters even if all subsequent encounters with a car are lop-sided on the prey energy side of things? And on a more general level, is this why dogs can form fearful or aggressive behavior towards objects that were once considered harmless/normal?

The last question is really interesting to me as I often hear of trainers using counter-conditioning and desensitization to help a dog with fears. In many cases the dog will make lots of progress but then revert back to the original fearful behavior suddenly– is this the dog returning to the original template that was formed?