Dominance?

Got up on the wrong side of the bed today. Or maybe it’s the weather.
By Alain Maortua: alainmaortua@gmail.com

The thing is my dog is dominant! That’s why she lunges…
That's what the owner of a German shepherd said to me once as he pulled on the leash to keep his dog away from mine.

I don't usully react to such comments. I just smile and go on walking, but this time maybe it was that I got up on the wrong side of the bed or maybe it was the weather, or most probably, it was the prospect of future encounters with this guy and his dog that made me react and dwell into the widespread myth of dominance.

We have already made it clear to her what her place in the pack is at home but out in the street...she likes to be dominant.

Ok, you see, even if it's a widespread view, it’s not true that dogs want to be dominant.

(laughs), well, you know, how can I explain?, there are dogs that are dominant, just the same as wolves, it’s the Alpha male and female. Dogs come from wolves, didn’t you ever hear about that?

Of course I have, but that is like saying that just because we people evolved from monkeys we behave as they do, that may be too much to say, don’t you think?

Well, I’m just saying what I heard from experts.

Yes, that’s true, there are many professionals that still think that we must be dominant with our dogs. That’s based on the idea that dogs evolved from wolves, wolves are dominant, and accordingly, dogs are dominant as well, as they see us as members of their pack, and they try to be dominant in the pack.
But, let me tell you again. That’s a widespread opinion, but that doesn’t make it true. Much of the research this idea is based on was conducted on non-natural assortments of captive wolves. Wolves do not take kindly to unknown wolves and that’s why they show conflict.

Well, packs made up with dogs and people are not natural either, and you’re saying that in packs in captivity, unknown wolves are dominant and then there’s conflict… Then, if the dog lives in a non-natural pack, that is, a human family, which is made up of strangers and if its position is not clear, if it doesn’t know who is boss, then it will fight for that position, won’t he.

Hold on a moment. Notice that when I talk about non-natural or captivity environments, I’m talking about groups, not packs. For a description of a pack, I’ll tell you about the latest studies by well-known wolf expert David Mech (1), which state that wolves live in family groups where the so-called Alpha are actually the parents (as Murie had already pointed out in 1944, and many others concluded afterwards: Young and Goldman, 1944; Shenkel, 1947; Mech, 1970, 1988; Clark, 1971; Haber,1977).

Mech concluded that the typical wolf pack is a family, with the adult parents guiding the activities of the group in a division-of-labour system. In Mech’s words: “Attempting to apply information about the behavior of assemblages of unrelated captive wolves to the familial structure of natural packs has resulted in considerable confusion. Such an approach is analogous to trying to draw inferences about human family dynamics by studying humans in refugee camps.” Besides, and sorry about the long speech, some other studies show that pack behaviour is a developed response to some specific environment. It is not a genetic behaviour, it isn’t innate. As Raymond Coppinger argues (2), it is epigenetic (3), that is, it is as a result of certain interaction between genes and the environment. So, if wolves do not form packs instinctively, why should dogs do?

Well, just because the interaction between people and dogs, say pack, group or whatever, is conducive to it. That’s the environment you’re telling me about.

Oh, really? Do we hunt together or something? Or fight for the same bitch in heat? Or maybe the same food?
Let’s be realistic here. There’s no reason for a dog to do that at all, all its needs are covered, and it seems logical to think that if there’s no need to form a pack, there’s no need to show dominance either, no reason for the famous alpha wolf.

Finally you’ll even get to say dogs don’t come from wolves at all…

Of course dogs come from wolves, or to be more accurate, both wolves and dogs evolved from the same canid, which was very much like wolves as we know them today, but that does not mean they behave in the same way. In fact, they don’t. Just notice they don’t show the same behaviour patterns (4). Can you picture a sheep-guarding wolf? What about a herding wolf? Dogs have gone through a domestication process which has made them different from wolves. Dogs can live with all types of animals in perfect harmony and they can be trained. Dogs and wolves learn in different ways, as shown by psychologist Harry Frank (5), and the reason is partly that their brain is much smaller and their needs are different. And we could also talk about the many physical differences between dogs and wolves, which are often overlooked:

Dogs have a greater density of sweat glands in their pads than wolves.
Female dogs have a heat cycle twice a year and female wolves only once.
Female dogs may get there first cycle of heat from 6-12 months old, female wolves never do before two years old.
Female dogs may have a litter any time of year, wolves only in spring.
Etc.

In short, “both canids, dogs and wolves, are adapted to different niches and thus they are different animals” (Raymond Coppinger)

No matter what you’ve just said, I have known dogs that were really dominant.

Were they dominant or had they just been taught to cause trouble?

What I see is that when another dog gets close to mine it shows submissive gestures and positions, because it knows my dog is dominant.

You’re interpreting that scene in terms of dominance-submission, but what if I say that what that dog’s doing is try to calm down your dog because she looks nervous, or she may look scared or distrustful. The other dog is sending calm signals (6), which is something to be grateful for, because thanks to that there’s no conflict. Sadly enough, in some dogs that ability is inhibited by inappropriate handling.

I know it is not easy to change our behaviour and our view of things, but we must know that dogs don’t understand us when we try to be leaders, they don’t know about packs, they don’t know about alpha roles. That attitude only leads us to totally confuse them, it leads to problems that were not there before. If we really love our dogs, why do we insist on bothering them non-stop? Why don’t we open our eyes and look beyond?

Hey, I have always had a dog, I have raised them all in the same way, and they have always respected me.

Where you see respect, I see something totally different, but I may tell you about that some other time. It’ll just depend on whether I get up the wrong or the right side of the bed, or it may depend on the weather, or most probably, I may feel like talking about your dog’s fear of you or maybe I don’t.

Obviously, this is a fictitious conversation but very often I have similar conversations about this subject. Let’s say this is a summary of them all.

It worries me that most dog owners have this incorrect view of things. Looking at their dogs from that dominance perspective makes them see continuous challenge in everything their dogs do, which leads them to share a miserable existence, with plenty of conflicts.

That is why I recommend them and You as well to go deeper into the subject so you get to know “the other version of the story” and you can draw your own conclusions. The Reference List I am attaching to this story will enable you to start dismantling once and for all the myth of dominance as an explanation for everything.

References, comments and definitions related to the article by Alain Maortua on the theory of DOMINANCE:

[1] L. David Mech, Alpha status, dominance, and division of labor in wolf packs. Canadian J. of Zoology 77 (1999) 1196-1203.
Available on the Internet: http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/mammals/alstat/index.htm
L. David Mech, The Artic Wolf. Ten years with the pack. Voyageur Pr (1997). ISBN-13: 978-0896583535
www.davemech.com: The concept of the Alpha wolf has had a deep impact on the literature on wolves partly as a result of my book “The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species”, written in 1968 and first published in 1976, with a second edition in 1981, and now again in the press, even though I begged the editor to stop publishing it. Most of the information on the book is correct but much of it is obsolete as we have learned more about wolves in the last 40 years than ever before.

David Mech is a Senior Research Scientist and Professor at the University of Minnesota in the US. He has been for long an internationally recognized wolf expert who has studied wolves and their prey since 1968. Ph. D. since 1962, he has more than 280 scientific publications, he is author of 10 books and reviewer for prestigious journals such as Science, and he teaches about 20 seminars on wolves every year. He is founder and vice chair of the International Wolf Center.
His website includes a detailed professional profile and a collection of spectacular photographs:www.davemech.com

One of the issues today obsolete is the concept of the Alpha wolf. To be Alpha means to be top dog after a row or a fight. Most wolves who are pack leaders reach that position by mating and getting pups that will later form their pack. In other words, top-wolves are actually breeders, or parents, and that is all we say about them nowadays.

[2] R. Coppinger, L. Coppinger, DOGS: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior, and Evolution. Scribner. ISBN: 0684855305

[3] Epigenetic: this refers to the chemical processes that modify gene expression patterns as a result of environmental stimulation. Even though DNA never changes, those mechanisms affect the creation or synthesis of proteins (which are created following instructions in the DNA), more specifically, they vary the amount to be synthesized or its frequency. Those mechanisms are chemical processes external to the DNA and thus dependant on the environment. One of the processes is methylation, which reduces the number of times a piece of DNA is read in order to synthesize a protein. The other process is related to histones, which wrap so tightly around certain parts of the DNA that they render them unreadable.

[4] Michael W. Fox. Canine Behavior (1963) and Understanding your dog (1972). Forerunner in the design of experiments to detect differences in motor patterns between tame and wild canids.

[5] H. Frank et al., Motivation and insight in wolf (Canis lupus) and Alaskan Malamute (Canis familiaris), in Visual discrimination and Learning, Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 27 (5), (1989) 455-58
H. Frank, G. Martha, Inhibition training in wolves and dogs. Behavioural Processes 8 (1983) 363-377.

[6] Turid Rugaas, On Talking Terms with dogs: Calming Signals. Publisher: Dogwise Publishing. Book/DVD Set.

Other references:
J. P. Scott, J. L. Fuller, Genetics and the social behavior of the dog., 1965
Laurie Corbet. The Dingo in Australia and Asia. 1995. J. B. Books. (2001) ISBN-13: 9781876622305.
Barry Eaton, Dominance: Fact or Fiction, ISBN-10: 0953303934

We recommend this as the reference book on the issue (or myth) of dominance. Barry Eaton portrays real situations where it makes no sense at all to be dominant with your dog. For example, going through the door before your dog: what if the door is far from you? Should we make a dash for it? Should everyone in the family walk out of the room before your dog every time it wants to leave the room? In a light-hearted but rigorous tone, Barry succeeds in dismantling the myth of dominance.