yes, i know…I’m a dog-lover, and i can’t help myself. yet, I think evidence exists that dogs frequently will put themselves in danger to help their human charges. take the famous rescues of drowning persons (by Labradors), or the search and rescue dogs. My own dog even-if someone touches me, she will growl at that person. I’ve also noticed that dogs exhibit what we humans call greed-many times, my dog will hoard chewbones-and take them from other dogs.
So, do dogs posess these human traits (at some low level)?
Purely Anecdotal story:
A Freind was out with her dog (A big old Chocalate Lab) on a winters day and the dog while running leash free got out onto the ice and fell in. The woman, unthinking, runs into the icy water to rescue the pooch. The dog swims out on its own and goes off to play with another dog while this woman is up to her chin in icy water.
She says that whole time as she is trying to get out she’s watching the animal having a ball on the shore and cursing herself for being so stupid.
She also says she also feared she was going to die that way which she said would be the “stupidest way for her to go” Luckily the worst she got was the shame and discomfort of trying to make her way home soaked.
I wouldn’t call it altruism. That’s an extremely advanced concept, and dogs aren’t capable of all of the thought processes which it requires. Dogs don’t consider all of the possible consequences their act may have, such as, “That person may kick me, or kill me.” (They’re very much creatures of the moment.)
What you’re seeing when the dog protects you is an animal protecting its terrirtory and its pack members. It’s something that exists in nearly all pack animals-- even bovines will sometimes charge an attacker to try to save a calf.
No.
Dogs are merely pack animals, that have accepted you as a dominant pack member. Pack members co-operate against outside threats.
The capacity to express altruism requires that you are capable of showing it towards a stranger, or even an enemy.
I started a thread here about a dog who saved his owner from fire and then went pack in for the cat. She ignored her owner’s calls to do it.
The more I think about that story, the more skeptical about it I get. Do we know that the dog was going back for the cat? (Was the dog found with the cat in his mouth?) Maybe the dog was going back to get the phone or to get another of her medical devices.
That he ignored her commands is not that unusual-- the dogs are trained to ignore commands in an emergency situation in case the person is incoherent. If he’d been trained to fetch medication or a medical device or even the telephone, he would have ignored her commands and gone back for them.
To assume that the dog was going back for the cat requires several other assumptions: That the dog knew the cat was in danger from the fire. He knew the human was in danger because she was alarmed, and he could tell by her voice and body language that she was in trouble. So, he got the leg and the phone for her as he had been trained. But that doesn’t mean he understood that the house was going to burn down and kill the cat.
Especially when word got out that her Retriever wouldn’t, you know, retrieve her.
Of course, this explanation is complicated by reports of dogs (and other animals) protecting humans and other animals that were not members of its “pack”.
As in other debates of this kind that we’ve seen on the SDMB, there are people willing to consider that different or primitive forms of human emotions or virtues may exist in less intellectually developed animals, and that a continuum of such abilities exists rather than a sharp demarcation between humans and “lesser” animals who couldn’t possibly possess any traits viewed as classically human. I do not find the former view outrageous or threatening.
Some would argue that true altriusm doesn’t exist even among humans, so I would doubt that it exists in dogs. I’m not about to venture into the terrority of what sort of thought processes dogs (or any other creatures) are capable of, though, because no one really knows.
Based on what we do know through observation, I think dogs protect and help us because they are pack animals, and because we’re the ones with the opposable thumbs - it’s hard to open the dog food cans without 'em. 
If we’re good to our dogs, then we’re a valuable resource to them and it makes sense they would protect that resource.
I’ve also observed in my own dogs remarkable instinctive abilities in group cooperation - when they find a rabbit in the yard and give chase, the seamless collaboration between the two of them to achieve the goal of catching it is truly awe-inspiring to watch. This instinct, I think, gives rise to a motivation to provide assistance, and dogs obviously have enough smarts to work a problem and figure out other ways they can help pack members.
Except is still requires the dog to consider the consequences of his actions for true altruism to occur. Some dogs are just wired for protection, either through instinct or conditioned repsonse. No need to invoke an altruistic intent to the behavior.
I have a female Jack Russell who considers any human lap she is in to ber her territory, whether she has known you for two years or two minutes. When other dogs get too close, she fires a warning shot. If they continue to close in, it escalates.
This rarely happens anymore, but only because I pre-emptively de-escalate the situation, either by controlling the intruding dog, or removing my dog from the lap.
Timely article in today’s Wall St. Journal (“What Your Pet Is Thinking”, 10/27).
Excerpts:
*"More and more, however, scientists are observing what they call altruistic behavior (in animals) that has no evident purpose. Prof. de Waal once watched as a bonobo picked up a starling. The bonobo carried it outside its enclosure and set the bird on its feet. When it didn’t fly away, the ape took it to higher ground, carefully unfolded its wings and tossed it into the air. Still hving no luck, she stood guard over it and protected it from a young bonobo that was nearby…
In June, scientists reported new insights about compassion in African elephants…
Critics say that consciousness is in the eye of besotted observers, and animals are no more than stimulus-response machines…As for emotions, the conventional view has long been that while animals might seem to be sad, happy, curious or angry, these weren’t true emotions: The creature didn’t know that it felt any of these things…The trouble is that all sorts of animals - from those in the African bush to those in your living room - keep acting as if they truly do have emotions remarkably like humans’. *(The article goes on to cite the case of a panda in a Chinese zoo that accidentally crushed her newborn to death and appeared devastated and inconsolable) “The keeper said that when he called her name, she just looked up at him with tear-filled eyes before lowering her head again. The conventional view is that these were instinctive, reflexive reactions, and that Ya Ya didn’t know she was sad. As the evidence for animal consciousness piles up, that view becomes harder to support.”
I don’t know whether dogs have thoughts/feelings that can be labeled altruism according to a defined set of experimental criteria. But I wouldn’t be too quick to rule out the possibility that something like canine altruism may occasionally exist in some form.*
*I try not to be overly subjective and gullible about these things. I’ve toyed with the idea of starting an MPSIMS thread centered on things dogs would be least likely to say, if they could talk. My #1 contribution would be “No, you have the last piece.” 
(Bolding mine)
Respectfully, that statement has far too many qualifiers to be a meaningful response to the OP. In fact, I will go so far as to state that, to my knowledge, some posssibility that something like canine altruism may occasionally exist in some form has not ever been ruled out, and may never be.
I truly believe that my dogs are very emotional, and don’t really understand why critics discount emotions that they claim the animals were not aware of.
I agree with your suggestion for things dogs would be least likely to say, followed closely by “No really, that pillow in front of the fireplace just suits you somehow. And besides, this cold stone floor does wonders for my back.”
This is also anecdotal, but I found it interesting.
Mr. Stuff knows a man who has been on the local emergency squad for most of his life. We live in a rural area, and sometimes people that die in their own homes go some time without anyone knowing that they’ve expired. He has, over time, seen quite a few of these cases. Many involved housepets.
The emergency squad man says that dogs will invariably lie beside their owners and starve to death if necessary. Cats, on the other hand, apparently start munching on the body at the first missed meal.
I’m not sure it means dogs are altruistic, but it does mean that if Mr. Stuff and I ever have indoor pets, they’ll be dogs.
Not altruistic, as the dogs are doing nothing to benefit others.
[Clint Eastwood]Cats gotta eat too.[/CW]