The Natural Dog Training Difference

Here's an in-depth look at how Natural Dog Training differs from the popular pack leader and positive reinforcement methods, including videos of all three methods in action.

The Natural Dog Training Difference

-->

I read something interesting on Kevin Behans’s blog the other day, about how nearly everyone who takes their first ride on a camel or elephant experiences motion sickness, but this doesn’t happen when people ride a horse for the first time. Kevin’s reasoning is that horses naturally know how to adjust their movements to incorporate the rider’s center of gravity.

In thinking about that, I realized that what’s missing from both the dominance and +R approach to training, and what we do, is that dogs really do have a sort of emotional center of gravity as Kevin postulates. And when we teach them to do an exercise like the heel, for instance, using thought-centric models of learning, such as dominance and +R, the dogs have to figure out, on their own, how to match their forward momentum and energy with ours. But when we teach them using Natural Dog Training, no matter how bad we are at it initially, if our goal is to teach the dog to be in-synch with us physically and emotionally (instead of teaching them to respect our leadership, or by rewarding their external behaviors), at some point we’ll find that we’re actually creating a feeling in the dog of a shared center-of-gravity, just like with a horse and rider. In that respect, heeling not only feels natural to the dog. It feels really, really good. 

To highlight these differences, here’s a video of Cesar Millan [note: this video has been deleted] solving a fairly simple behavioral problem of a great Dane who gets too energized when she goes jogging with her owner. She expresses this excess energy (which is essentially a nervousness about how to keep her desire to run full-bore in check) as jumping up. Millan interprets this as dominance, and teaches the dog to stay next to her owner by being “submissive.”

There’s so much wrong in Cesar’s explanation of the problem, not mention in how he solves it, yet it’s hard to dispute the visual “evidence” of the results.

So what, exactly, if anything, is wrong with Cesar’s approach? 

Well for starters, even without knowing that dominance is not a real character trait or behavioral output in dogs, it’s quite easy to see that the Dane is simply expressing a strong social attraction — the desire to connect to her owner — in an inappropriate way. She’s also feeling nervous because she's unsure of how to align her energy with the owner while they're running: faster forward momentum = a challenge to the dog's ability to feel or stay connected, so she’s jumping up to ground some of that excess energy. 

The thing is, you never want to punish or correct social attraction, no matter what form it takes. And you especially don’t want to do it by intimidating the dog, as Cesar does. If you watch his body language, and the body language of the dog very closely, you’ll see that Millan is actually acting very much like a predator in order to keep the dog in a “submissive” state. You can see this most clearly in the section where he first demonstrates the “touch” to the dog’s throat — which in the past he described as a “bite,” as in “If a dog can bite me, why I can't I bite him back?” — then moves into the dog’s space, making the dog even more nervous and unsure of herself.

In short, the problem is “solved” by repressing the dog’s energy instead of celebrating that energy and channeling it into a happy, joyous heel. (Personally, I probably wouldn’t take a great Dane jogging anyway; I don’t thinking jogging is a good idea with most dogs, particularly those with a big barrel chest and narrow waist.*)

But other than telling the owner to come up with an alternative exercise plan,** if we look at this as an energy problem, the way to solve it would be keep that level of energy active in the dog, but give it a different outlet without intimidating or repressing her drive to connect. In other words, keep the dog’s drive energy up but channel it into a heel. (After a while the Dane learns to do this on her own, but is still confused, unhappy, and not as energetic as before.)

Contrast the dominance approach with the traditional clicker-training and food-luring method, as shown by Nancy Cusick, a professional dog trainer from Texas who's been described (by herself and others) as The Awesomest Dog Trainer in Austin, which she may very well be. (I pulled this video at random from YouTube.)

I see several things lacking here. One is that the puppy is a bit too young for the exercise. She just wants to sniff and explore. Each time she does, Cusick redirects her with a kissing sound. That’s nice, and fine in theory, but by doing this Cusick slowly and inevitably becomes an obstacle to the puppy’s desires, desires that are being controlled more by the puppy’s developmental needs than by hunger.

Also, at one point when the pup sits while not in the heel position, the trainer moves her body next to the pup’s rather than using her own body language and energy to induce the puppy to move toward her and then sit. Then she clicks and rewards the dog for being in that position. This is based on the somewhat questionable idea that dogs learn through positive reinforcement: if the dog is reinforced while it’s in the proper position it will gradually learn to choose that position on its own. (Notice that despite the seeming validity of this idea, the more the trainer rewards the puppy for being in the heel position, the more the puppy actually wanders off to explore, and do other things on her own.)

Another problem is that when the trainer accidentally drops food on the ground, and the puppy goes after it, the trainer makes the kissing sound again to try to redirect the puppy’s attention back to her. Again, you can see clearly that the more the trainer does this, the less attention the puppy pays to the trainer. (At one point the trainer even jokes to the camera, “Attention doggie deficit…” and chuckles.) 

There is nothing inherently wrong with using a kissing sound while teaching a dog to walk next to you. The problem here is with the timing. Instead of making the kissing sound as soon as the pup loses focus, the trainer does it after the puppy has already projected its energy onto something else. So the kissing sound ends up feeling like a punishment to the puppy.  

Puppy loses focus ... finds something to focus on ... handler makes kissing sound.  

Puppy feels, “Hey, I was having fun!” 

Contrast that with making the kissing sound the instant the pup loses focus, before she finds something else to focus her energy on: “What can I find around here to focus on?”   

Puppy loses focus ... trainer immediately makes kissing sound.  

Here the puppy feels, “Oh, good! I can focus my energy on you! This feels great!”

See the difference?

I’ll give Cusick the benefit of the doubt (as I said, she probably is the awesomest dog trainer in Austin, Texas), and suggest that part of the problem may be she’s not just focused on training the pup, she’s also talking to the camera as she works: not an easy thing to do. 

However, in the end the puppy only has a “generalized” heel, whose focus is very easily broken except when doing the sit while in the heel position. The reason the puppy is focused then is because that’s the only time the puppy isn’t feeling a disconnect between its own body and the trainer’s. While they’re doing the heel the puppy is mildly interested in getting the treats, but can’t figure out how to match her body’s need for forward momentum with the movement of the trainer’s body and the food lure. And the trainer isn’t using the food to help the pup solve the problem, she’s only using it as a lure and a positive reinforcement.

To recap, in Cesar Millan’s mind the dog’s problem is “How can I be submissive to my pack leader?” which is based on a false premise. Meanwhile, the positive trainer sees the puppy’s problem as, “How can I get a reward? Maybe if I heel I’ll get a treat?” which is just as false. Both ideas require the dog to engage in a linear, rational, time-dependent thought process, and a) dogs aren't capable of rational or hypothetical thinking, and b) they live totally in the moment, without any awareness of linear, chronological time. 

In each case the real problem for the doggie is, “How can I get my body to feel in-synch with my handler’s energy and momentum while we’re both moving together?” 

Now contrast these two approaches with this video of Kevin Behan, working on the heel with a Doberman pinscher named Laszlo, using the natural approach. 

First of all Laszlo is no ordinary dog. His owner brought him to Kevin because she was having a great deal of difficulty with his overabundant energy. As she wrote on her own blog, Laszlo was so wired that “he wouldn't lie down. I don't mean on command — I mean, he wouldn't lie down. Such was his anxiety and vigilance.” 

Now, that’s a tense doggie! 

The first thing Kevin does with Laszlo in this video is the pushing exercise, where he gets Laszlo to push for food. He does it, among other things, to stimulate Laszlo's social attraction to him. To the uninitiated viewer this may look just like “luring” the dog with treats the way Nancy Cusick does, but there’s a lot more to it than that. 

How to Do the Pushing Exercise 

How and Why It Works 

After a bit of pushing, Kevin begins moving around, encouraging Laszlo to move with him. At one point Laszlo gets distracted by a puddle, but Kevin just keeps moving (no kissing sound), encouraging the dog to connect to him (and what’s in his bait bag). At other times Laszlo finds bits of food on the ground and Kevin waits a bit for him to finish eating them before he starts moving again. 

Once he’s got Laszlo moving with him he begins to oscillate between acting like prey and predator, moves that again, to the uninitiated, might seem to have no purpose.

“He’s just throwing in some silly tai-chi moves to impress people.”

They may seem silly, but if you watch carefully, you’ll see that each shift in Kevin’s body language creates an immediate, in-the-moment shift in Laszlo's behavior, his approach to staying in-synch with Kevin’s movements. Those “silly” moves of Kevin’s have nothing to do with tai-chi, per se, though they do create shifts in Laszlo’s energy (which, for all I know, may actually be one of the goals of tai-chi).

At a certain point, Kevin even gets Laszlo to hold a down/stay without even giving the command. (Kevin exhibits some interesting “marching band” moves during this sequence as a means of both enticing Laszlo to break the stay, and to keep him in it at the same time.) And you’ll notice that Laszlo’s ears never go down or back except once or twice, for a fraction of a second, and each time they do, Kevin compensates with food or with his body language to bring the dog’s energy back into to a more relaxed and confident state.

There is no intimidation or dominance and submission in anything Kevin does. (Kevin does occasionally touch Laszlo’s neck with the back of his hand, which is done to help ground the dog's energy a little and to “steer” him a little, the way you’d do with a horse’s reins.)

You’ll also notice (I hope) the way Kevin does the about turns, which gently induce Laszlo to stay in "the pocket." To help with this, he uses food as a means of keeping the dog’s drive-to-connect up and active rather than as a reward for any one specific behavior. It’s more like a dance, one that leaves Laszlo entirely under Kevin’s command with no punishment or bad feelings taking place. 

At the end, Laszlo is heeling off-lead, and his energy is totally plugged in to Kevin.

By the way, the movements that Kevin makes don’t need to be, and in my opinion, shouldn’t be, copied exactly by you or anyone else. Those particular “dance steps” are organic to Kevin’s emotional energy and personality. Think of Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Bob Fosse performing the exact same dance sequence for a movie. Even seen only in silhouette, so you couldn’t recognize their faces, there would be no question as to which man was dancing during each sequence. By the same token, everyone will do the heel exercise differently, depending on how they naturally express their own energy through their own physical and emotional centers-of-gravity. 

LCK 
“Changing the World, One Dog at a Time”
Join Me on Facebook!
Follow Me on Twitter!

Join the Rescue Dog Owners Support Group!  

PsychologyToday.com Blog (archived)

Footnotes:

*Breeds like Danes, Dobermans, Dalmatians, viszlas, boxers, greyhounds, who all have a similar chest conformation, are designed to run hard and fast for brief spurts, not to jog slowly for long stretches.

 

**Working on the heel the way Kevin does will use up more of a dog's energy in 5 - 10 minutes than a 1/2 hour jog will. If you add playing tug, fetch, and push-of-war, the dog's energy needs will be completely satisfied.

Swimming Upstream

This is an early explanation of how and why "The Pushing Exercise," where you get your dog to push into as hard as he can, are helpful at solving behavioral problems.

Swimming Upstream:
Using Resistance to Solve Behavioral Problems

We've talked a lot here about how tug and the pushing exercise can build a dog's confidence. And that sounds fine and quite noble in a way, but what does it mean really, to build a dog's confidence? And what about dog owners who perceive their dog's aggression, for example, as not being caused by a lack of confidence, but too much of it (or too much "dominance")? Or the woman I met on the street today whose dog's paws are bright pink from being licked obsessively, yet the owner claims the dog is super confident, and the least anxious dog you'd ever meet? On a certain level neither type of dog needs to have their confidence built, but they both need help with what's going on inside their emotional pressure cookers.

As usual I think it's best to take this down to its barest essentials: how the dog handles changes in the continuous flow of energy between himself and the environment. As we know, when talking about dogs as part of an energy exchange system, a dog's energy has two polarities: attraction and resistance. Also, since it's been my thesis for a long time that dogs are part of a self-organizing system, which for lack of a better word we call "the pack," I was both surprised and delighted to find this definition of self- organizing systems on Wikipedia:

"Self-organization is a process of attraction and repulsion in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system, increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source. Self-organizing systems typically (though not always) display emergent properties."

This idea, of the canine pack as a self-emergent system, has been a theme (or sub-theme) throughout all of my novels. The point here is that self-organizing systems are said to operate on polarities of attraction and resistance (or repulsion), which for me, goes directly back to Natural Dog Training by Kevin Behan, even though Kevin had never heard of emergence theory when he wrote it. 

But since the topic of today's blog is how and why playing tug and doing the pushing exercise helps a dog overcome behavioral problems by building his ability to deal with sudden shifts in energy, particularly in the form of strong feelings of resistance that he feels he can't get past, I thought I should lay down a bit of that foundation first:

All behaviors are part of an energy exchange with the environment 

and all energy manifests as either attraction or resistance, 

or a combination of the two. 

So here's a discussion I had with a dog owner named Anna, at AllExperts.com:

Subject: Dog aggression.

We have a three year old neutered male Boston Terrier, Willie. Ever since we got him he has been highly aggressive towards other dogs but more so lately. When we first got him we had a spayed female Great Dane who has since passed away. At their first meeting he tried to lunge and bite her but once he realized that she didn’t respond aggressively towards him they got along fine and never once fought. But when he is out in our yard he has actually broken our gate and attacked another dog. In the house he ran so hard into our front door that it broke open and he again went after another dog pinning down a 150 lbs mastiff while biting his neck (He has never actually hurt another dog; he doesn’t bite hard enough to break the skin.).

We take him for daily walks were he still goes crazy at the sight or sound of another dog. He is completely unresponsive to treats or his favorite pull rope when he sees another dog. At first we were using a regular collar and leash which he would pull and choke himself with. Next we tried a Gentle Leader head collar which stopped his pulling but gave him sores on the top of his nose (we tried to put Vaseline on his nose but is still broke the skin). We then tried a small prong collar which has by far worked the best. He no longer pulls on the leash but still does react to other dogs. To correct him we would give a quick tug on the leash and calmly tell him no, try to distract him with treats or a toy. No correction has been successful. 

Any advice you may have would be very welcomed. Also since using the e-collar he has never gotten gone after another dog in the yard or the house. He is a great dog and would be amazing at agility if he could just get past his issues. He knows tons of tricks and is very eager to learn and highly motivated by food unless there is another dog. Please let me know if there is anything I forgot to mention and I look forward to your response.

Anna 

ANSWER: Hi, Anna,

Thanks for the question.

All aggression is based on fear. And Willie is exhibiting high levels of nervous tension (or stress). Think of the little guy as a salmon swimming upstream, fighting against the current, only Willie is fighting against internal emotional currents that get stirred up in him when he sees other dogs and feels suddenly as if he's going to be attacked. In the normal scope of things, his emotional river runs through a broad channel, and the current travels at a slow, comfortable pace. But when he sees another dog, the energy builds, the emotions tighten up in him, and he feels like he's going to "drown." So he lashes out at what he perceives to be the locus point of the sudden energy shift from lazy river to extreme rapids.

With me so far?

Okay, now let's take this down to the bare essential quality that causes his aggression. Dogs have two social polarities, social attraction and social resistance. Social attraction is what makes dogs gravitate towards, and to want to be pals with, other dogs. Social resistance is what makes them tell another dog, "Hey, you're getting too close here!" As you found out with your great Dane, Willie has strong social attraction, and would probably love to play with every dog he meets if he could only get past these Rapids of Doom that keep cropping up in his internal emotional river.

The reason his emotions feel like rapids is that he doesn't have a normal, well-balanced dog's (or a salmon's) natural skill for swimming upstream. This is probably because he was abused or trained in very heavy-handed manner before you came along and rescued him. So, to repeat the metaphor, when there's a sudden influx of energy, he feels thrown off balance emotionally. And since he has strong levels of social attraction, his instinctive strategy is to go AT the other dogs rather than to run AWAY from them. The primary reason he does this is that he hasn't been given the skill-set necessary for dealing with strong feelings of internal and external resistance. He doesn't know how to swim against the current.

There are two exercises that will help him learn this skill.

One is a pushing exercise, where you hand feed him all his meals, outdoors. You put one hand against his chest, palm up, and hold his food up to his mouth for him to eat. As he eats out of your hand you start to slowly yet almost imperceptibly pull the food hand away so that he has to push into your other hand in order to eat. As you progress with this exercise over time, you want to get to the point that he's pushing into you with all his might in order to eat. This will teach him, on a visceral and emotional level, that he can not only tolerate strong feelings of resistance, but that he can conquer them; he can swim upstream. It will also change the emotional dynamic between the two of you so that he'll be more focused on you and your commands while he's outdoors and there are other dogs around.

Another helpful tool, involving resistance, is to play tug-of-war with him outdoors every day, always let him win, and praise him enthusiastically for winning. 

If, once you've built up his internal emotional ability to handle resistance, and he's still acting snarky toward other dogs (after all, he's a Boston terrier, so it's not out of the realm of possibility), then you can employ some of the techniques found in the following link: 

http://www.tiny.cc/RedirectWalk 

Also, since part of Willie's problem with other dogs is that he can't handle the sudden influx of energy that he feels when he sees them, it's NOT a good idea to use an electronic collar. The e-collar adds more energy to the equation. So even though it seems to be working, there's going to be a severe downside at some point. More energy in = more energy out. The prong collar is fine for now, but if you do the exercises I've given you, then eventually you'll be able to walk him on a regular collar or even a harness. 

Dear LCK,
Thank you so much. Your view on training is different from many others in which we have consulted. It has only been two days we have had your advice and already we see improvements. We couldn't thank you enough!

Thanks again,

Anna 

Okay, so that worked for Willie. But the pushing exercise isn't just for aggression. It's helpful with all fear-related behaviors, including obsessive licking, phobias, possessiveness, and separation anxiety. 

The point is that it's very helpful to think of behavior in terms of pure energy, and how capable the dog is engaging in an energetic dynamic at a high rate of exchange. That's where the salmon/river analogy helps. Most dogs are capable of fairly high rate of energy exchange with their environment. This ability comes directly from the group hunting behaviors of the wolf. But due to mistreatment, bad breeding, or whatever the cause (which is kind of irrelevant), some dogs aren't very good at processing certain types of energy at a high rate of flow; when the channel narrows, the emotional waters run faster, and these dogs literally feel thrown off-balance emotionally. Why? Because they need to work on developing more of an ability to handle resistance, both internal and external.

With Anna's dog the sudden influx of energy came when he saw other dogs on the street. With Trevor the energy overload came when he was left alone; he'd go into a panic state instead of being able to swim against the emotional currents. I worked on a resource-guarding case recently with a springer spaniel named Caleb, whose feelings of attraction to his toys and food dish were so strong that when another dog came toward him he went into energy overload and would try to attack them. Just yesterday Caleb and Dougie were playing tug-of-war with one of Caleb's favorite toys! He actually enjoys sharing now.

In another case (see the comments section), a terrier mix named Henry stopped jumping up on strangers, stopped stealing other dogs' balls, and started paying much more attention to his owner outdoors, just from doing the pushing exercise and the "eyes."

If you fall overboard and know how to swim, you'll quickly find your balance. If you don't know how, you'll feel like you're drowning and you'll just start thrashing around in a panic. And that's very similar to the way a dog feels when the energy in a particular situation is too much for him to handle. He feels like he's drowning and acts out of either panic or deep fear. The pushing exercise teaches him how to manage those emotional currents with no fear at all.

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

My Psychology Today Blog

 Join Me on Facebook!

Follow Me on Twitter!
Join the Dog Trainers Network!  

Is Your Dog Dominant, or Just Feeling Anxious?

The following post is already available elsewhere. Summer’s Mommy e-mailed me today about a trainer she’s been working with who uses some of the same techniques we do, but is still hung up on the dominance label. If you know anyone like that, e-mail them this post.

Is Your Dog Dominant, or Just Feeling Anxious?

Dominance: I Know It When I See It!
You hear a lot of talk among dog owners, dog trainers, and even the man on the street, about dominance in dogs. What is it, exactly? Is it an instinctive behavioral tendency, an inherited genetic trait, part of a natural power struggle to become top dog? We all have our own ideas as to what it means, and we all “know it when we see it,” but what are its scientific origins? How does it manifest in behavioral terms? Does it have a sound evolutionary purpose? Or is it based on a simple misunderstanding of a dog’s true emotional nature?

One clue is that in multiple dog households you often hear owners say that one dog is “dominant” over food, while another may be “alpha” over the couch, and a third may be “the pack leader” when it comes to who’s first through the door or who gets to play with which toys. But if dominance were a real genetic behavioral tendency, geared toward ruling the roost, why would it be so specific to food bowls and not to the best sleeping spots and going through doorways and controlling how others play as well? Why wouldn’t one dog in a multiple dog pack be dominant about everything? Isn’t that his role as the pack leader?

As part of a new trend away from this idea, many experts in animal behavior are now beginning to replace the old terms of dominant and submissive behaviors with the more accurate threatening and non- threatening postures. In other words, where before we’d see a dog acting dominant over food but not over the couch or during play, we now know that he might simply exhibit a series of threatening postures to keep other dogs away from his food bowl in the one case, but not exhibit such postures in the others. Is this true dominance, or is the dog simply engaging in resource guarding—keeping the other dogs from having access to the things that mean the most to him individually? If it’s resource guarding, then the behavior is probably caused by simple possessiveness, not by an instinctive need or desire to be “alpha.”

It might clarify things if we knew how the idea of dominant behavior originated.

A Reflexive Dance
Konrad Lorenz was the first to describe the basic difference between dominance and submission in canines his 1952 book KING SOLOMON’S RING. He stated that when two dogs or wolves are engaged in a conflict, the defeated animal supposedly offers his neck to the other because if he does he’ll “never be seriously bitten. The other growls and grumbles, snaps with his teeth in the empty air and even carries out, without delivering so much as a bite, the movement of shaking something to death. However, this strange inhibition from biting persists only as long as the defeated dog or wolf maintains his attitude of humility.”

Hasn’t it ever struck you as strange (a word that even Lorenz uses) that when two animals are fighting one would offer himself up to the other to be executed? Why wouldn’t he struggle with all his might to survive? Does this dog suddenly have some magical awareness of Ghandi’s “peaceful resistance?” Has he studied Zen? Or is something else going on?

That’s exactly what biologist Rudolf Schenkel, who disagreed with the alpha theory from the very outset, said. “It is always the inferior wolf,” Schenkel wrote, “who has his jaws near the neck of his opponent.” Schenkel also points out that it’s the supposedly dominant wolf or dog who walks away from the fight, making him “more vanquished than victor.”

Now that makes sense. The submissive wolf actually has his teeth closer to the throat of his opponent, putting him at a slight advantage. That’s why the “dominant” wolf doesn’t bite, and that’s why he walks away without finishing his enemy off. Yes, the lower wolf is in a weaker position physically, but he’s not rolling over on his side in submission or to commit suicide; he’s putting himself in a position that, given the weaker nature of his temperament, feels most natural to him, yet still enables him to defend himself if need be.

The behaviors of both parties probably originated simply for the evolutionary purpose of defusing tension and maintaining harmony between pack mates. Wolves and dogs are predators. And being a predator of any kind requires that you have a reservoir of aggressive energy available to you at all times. But if you’re a group predator, meaning you’re a social animal too, nature doesn’t want that aggression being directed at your brothers-in-arms, she wants it directed only at prey animals and sometimes at other packs who invade your turf. (Which again, is a form of resource guarding.)

Meanwhile, it’s doubtful that either one of the wolves in Lorenz’s example would be consciously aware of his position of advantage or disadvantage, of power or weakness. Instead, it would be much like the interaction between two magnets whose poles counter one another’s energy: the superior wolf has a direct, assertive energy, which when directed at the inferior wolf causes his indirect energy to spin off in the other direction, both physically and emotionally. If they were both direct and both assertive, and came toward each other with ears, tails, and shoulders held high, bloodshed would quickly ensue. But nature is wiser than the individual wolf; she wants the pack to get along, so she created this reflexive dance.

So here we have, at the very start of this idea about dominance and submission, what is probably a major misunderstanding committed by the primary architect of the alpha theory, a misunderstanding so major, in fact that it turns out that the “submissive” wolf or dog is in fact controlling the “dominant” one’s behavior as much if not more than the other way around. Yet despite the simple, obvious logic of Rudolf Schenkel’s view, Konrad Lorenz’ misinterpretation that the weaker wolf is offering his neck because he’s showing submission, or “humility” (as Lorenz calls it), continues to be handed down to us as “fact” today.

They Aren’t the Same Animal
Part of the problem with the manner in which the ideas about dominance and submission emerged may come from the belief that Lorenz and others of his time had that the social behavior of captive wolves, being held prisoner in zoos and sanctuaries, would be much the same as it is in wild wolves, who roamed free in the wilderness. This belief may have arisen partly out of scientific necessity, because during the 1930s and 40s, when these initial studies were done, wild wolves were almost totally inaccessible. That’s no longer true.

Dr. L. David Mech (pronounced Meech) of the University of Minnesota, who has spent his entire career studying wild wolves in their natural habitats, writes, “In captive packs dominance labels were probably appropriate, for most species thrown together in captivity would usually so arrange themselves. In nature, however, the wolf pack is not such an assemblage.” [1]

If Mech is right, then captive wolves and wild wolves aren’t the same animal, at least not when it comes to their social behaviors. In fact, in Mech’s observations over the past forty years, there actually is no pack leader in wild wolf packs, at least not in the traditional sense. He writes, “The concept of the alpha wolf as a ‘top dog’ ruling a group of similar-aged compatriots is particularly misleading.” Mech and his colleagues are also reluctant to use the word alpha because, as they put it, “It falsely implies a hierarchical system in which a wolf assumes a place in a linear pecking order.” They reserve the term alpha for the breeding pair, though Mech says that’s a bit like calling your dad a “male” father.

So in wild wolves there’s usually no hierarchy, no pecking order, and no pack leader. Is there such a thing as dominance?

Yes, says, Mech, though it only occurs in rare instances, and usually only take place over how to disburse food to the young. Yet one of the most striking things about these battles is that it’s usually the “submissive” (or non-threatening) female who triumphs over the “dominant” (aggressively threatening) male! She actually wins by acting in a manner that we’ve all been taught is the instinctive way one wolf will submit to the authority of a dominant pack mate.

How Does a True Dominance Display Happen?
The male has killed a hare and comes trotting back toward the den where, presumably, he wants to eat his kill in peace and safety. As he approaches, the female comes toward him. His neck and back go up. He stands tall and stiff. She approaches, low to the ground. The closer she comes, the stiffer he stands. The stiffer he gets, the lower she gets to the ground. Then as she comes right up to him, while he’s growling and standing firm, she very nearly rolls over on her back in the way the inferior wolf in Lorenz’s description does. Here, though, she’s not on her back and not offering her neck. So why is she so low to the ground? The next part of the drama explains it: crouching in front of her mate, so low to the ground as to almost be on her back, her jaws are actually now in a perfect position to grab the hare right out of the male’s mouth. Which is exactly what she does! Then she runs back to her pups, leaving the male standing there, hare-less and “wondering” what the hell just happened.

So again, this natural behavior in wild wolves is in direct contradiction to the idea that dominance is about being in control. It’s not; it’s simply about resource guarding. (The male wants the hare for himself; she wants it for her pups.) And just as in the battle Lorenz described, it’s the non- threatening wolf that actually exerts more control and eventually wins the confrontation.

Are there other times when dominance displays erupt between wild wolf pack members? Yes, they happen rarely and usually occur when the pack is hungry and hasn’t hunted large prey in a while. This might explain why dominant behaviors are much more common in captive wolves who never get a chance to hunt large prey together as a real wolf pack would.

Dominance = Anxiety
Wait, let’s go back. Why would hunting large prey reduce a wolf’s tension?

Simple. Because hunting large prey uses up a lot of aggressive energy. In wild wolf packs this goes a long way to reducing their individual levels of internal tension and stress. But since captive wolves don’t have access to this natural method of reducing stress, or of offloading their natural predatory aggression, or of fostering group harmony (you can’t hunt large prey without working together), captive wolves find themselves fighting over little things instead; that’s what they do with their aggressive energy—they scrimmage.

The same process would be apparent in both village dogs and domesticated dogs. Village dogs don’t usually hunt together; they mostly scavenge. So they tend to have the same build up of tension seen in captive wolves, so they skirmish a lot. With pet dogs, who are like both village dogs and captive wolves in that they don’t routinely hunt as a group, it’s often the most “dominant” dog in a household who doesn’t know how to play, for example. And since play is nature’s stand-in for the hunt (it teaches young predators how to catch prey, and young prey animals how to avoid being killed), it’s a great tension reducer, as well as a kind of social “glue”—it bonds dogs and owner together emotionally. And for dogs, in fact for all animals, social play is probably the best tension-reducer there is.

That’s why when a “dominant” dog is taught how to play hunting games in a harmonic social context, or when his owner or trainer find another way to reduce his inner anxiety, you’ll find that all his supposed instinctual dominant behaviors begin to “magically” disappear.

So it turns out that what we’ve all been taught was “dominance” is really two things: a build up of internal stress, and a form of resource guarding, which is an anxiety-based behavior.

Wait, dominance is nothing more than a form of anxiety? Yep. The standard pharmacological treatment for “dominance aggression” in dogs comes in the form of anti-anxietal medication. And though these drugs don’t cure “dominance aggression,” they are generally effective at managing it! So yes, clearly “dominance” is just a symptom of anxiety.

Dr. Karen Overall of the University of Pennsylvania writes, “The ‘alpha’ concept is an outdated one with almost no data to support it. There are no truly ‘submissive’ or ‘dominant/alpha’ dogs, and by [using] these labels we blind ourselves to all of the interesting information that dogs are communicating with [their] postures.” (“Interdog aggression: What are the warning signs?” April 1, 2002, DVM Magazine)

So now we’re back to our new terminology: dominant and submissive behaviors aren’t what they seem: they’re more rightly called threatening and non-threatening postures. And they aren’t inherited traits in dogs and wolves, nor are they part of the pack instinct’s non-existent hierarchical structure; they’re simply communicative actions and postures that express a dog’s inner tension, stress, and anxiety. So the upshot of all this is, if you think your dog is dominant, you might want to take another look. He could just be anxious and need a lot more play time…

LCK

"Changing the World, One Dog at a Time"

My Psychology Today Blog

Join Me on Facebook!

Follow Me on Twitter!

Footnotes:

1) Mech has since gone back on this statement. Ignoring the data he gathered during his 9 summers studying the Ellesmere Island pack, he now says that dominance is a key feature of canine social behavior.