A Question of Personality

My girlfriend and I went to look for a second dog. We're looking for a female to give companionship to Koya, a male Golden Retriever. We looked at four dogs. The first was a small/medium-sized mix of a Whippit and some other breed--I can't remember it offhand--but she was very playful--too playful in fact for my girlfriend. She bit her a couple of times playfully. My girlfriend thought the dog’s personality would be too strong for her even though the dog wasn't too big. (You can see her excitement in the picture above).

The next one was a black Labrador that was somewhat energetic but mostly shy. We liked her more than the first one, but she had an eye infection and we'd have to take her to a vet to get surgery.

The third one was almost perfect (to the right), but after awhile she started to bark and looked for holes to get out of the fenced area. We read her profile and she was surrendered because she kept on escaping! The fourth was a small male who didn't pay any attention to us, which the volunteer told us is normal for a small breed. We found out that they are also very nervous.

The experience today made me think of a) the personalities of people, b) the personalities of other species throughout the animal kingdom, and c) the link between environment and genes in developing character/personality. In reference to the first two, they're very similar and everyone who's ever owned a dog knows it (as a very general rule, it seems that the lower the brain mass of a species, the lower the variability in personality within the same species). As to the third point, I think that obviously the environment affects a person, but for the most part our actions are fixed. Just as no matter how much healthy food you give a dog, the longest it will live is 12 or 15 years. The same applies to personality (and the lifespan of a human, incidentally). Some abused dogs act shy for the rest of their lives; others afflicted with the same abuse will be aggressive. The biological and behavioral range of every species is fixed. The environment affects actions within that range, but the range itself can never change within a lifetime of any single living being (unless exposed to radiation?).

Hopefully I've applied my understanding of Sociobiology and On Human Nature by E.O. Wilson correctly.