meet the instructors | news | links | testimonials | special events | our graduate brags
 

The Alpha Myth

Is your dog trying to dominate you? Do you need to establish yourself as "Alpha"?

This has been a popular training theory that many people have bought into for decades... but how valid is it? Although the theory may seem to make sense based on common ideas of packs, a theory is an opinion, or speculation that must then be held up to science. So how well does this theory hold up to the science?

Here are some facts on dominance by Lisa (Laney) Patrona, Dip. DTBC, CPDT, CBC, excerpted from one of our archived articles:

"Dominance" among canines is defined as exclusive breeding rights and priority access/control of limited primary resources.

During the 1940's, studies were conducted on captive wolf populations. The keyword here is captive, and this alone invalidated the study because the animals were not in a natural environment and therefore did not act naturally.

In a natural environment, wolves disperse at about 2 - 2.5 years of age to form their own packs, in which they will be the dominant animal. This keeps aggression or challenges for status to a minimum, and provides for survival of the species. In the captive studies, the animals could not disperse naturally, so there was a significant amount of aggression, fighting and other agonistic displays observed like standing over one another. One standing over the other and being "taller" is a way that dogs will try to communicate status. When a dogs "hackles" are up around another, it is often intended to make the animal look taller and communicate status. The information derived from the studies of captive packs was then transferred to dog/human relationships, and is primarily where this notion of "never be on the same level or allow your dog to be above you" came from.

Many studies have been done on free ranging wolf populations since the earlier ones on captive populations that have provided an eye-opening look at the reality of their social relationships, much of which conflicts with the conclusions drawn from the captive studies.

Dogs recognize that human beings are not conspecifics (of the same species). There is no scientifically valid research to support the notion that a pet dog would ever want to, or try to, dominate a human being. Given the definition of the word dominance, what would breeding rights or priority access to limited primary resources have to do with the dog sleeping in bed with you, or sitting next to you on the couch have to do with it? Most of what we see behaviorally in domestic dog/human interaction is learned, not instinctive.

Pet dogs can and do learn to use behaviors to control environmental consequences. In other words, when they learn that a particular behavior "works" in gaining a desired consequence, they will continue to use it. For example, if a dog growls because someone is trying to move him off the couch or bed, it's because it's worked in the past in controlling the environmental consequence (he gets left alone where he's comfortable!) not because he's trying to be "dominant".


Sign up to receive Woofology's Tip of Week via email: woofologist@yahoo.com