Lorenz had been a fervent member of the Nazi Party before and during the war, and was thusly raised with the
Nazi Cult of the Wolf. This cult painted a picture of the wolf as a noble animal that was very like the Nazi. It
was merciless and wild, a member of a natural hunting elite. The wolf lived in tight, closed groups that were
-- surprise, surprise -- organized just like the Nazi Party. There was the mighty male Alpha leader to whom all
gave unquestioning loyalty, and who ruled the group with an iron hand. There was a strict hierarchy, which
could never be ignored. The lower-downs didn't mind this. They loved their Alpha leader, in fact, the more he
bullied them, the more they adored him. Lorenz was specialized in the study of birds, but once in the US he
didn't hesitate to publish popular books about dogs. He presented the dog to us as a kind of tame wolf that
still lived in a Nazi-like mental world, ever struggling with us to climb up a little higher on the hierarchy. He
warns us not to get sentimental. When you get down on the floor to play with your dog, the dog is pretending
to be friendly, but meanwhile it is using the game to look for chinks in your power. It will grasp every
opportunity to shift the power relations to its own advantage.
No one dared to call Lorenz on the fact that he was projecting, probably partly because he had meantime won
the Nobel Prize, and probably partly just simply because the idea of living with a wolf is so romantic and
appeals to so many of us. His vision on dogs became widely popular, and now many of us are unknowingly
applying a human dictatorship model to our relationships with dogs.
Later, with the field of genetics on the rise, it seemed to many that Lorenz might be right about the dog being a
kind of wolf. There is still much dispute about how close the dog and the wolf are. Some believe the dog split
off 130,000 years ago, others think it was as recent as 12,000 years ago. Some think we tamed the dog's
ancestor, some think (and we are inclined to agree) that the animal made the jump into a new ecological
niche all by itself. In any case, the dog is not the descendant of any living wolf. Its ancestor, whatever that
ancestor may have been, is, by definition extinct.
Besides the time span, there also is much dispute about what genetic similarities mean. To give some
examples, we differ by about 2% genetically from chimpanzees -- but human males and females also differ
genetically by about 2% (men have 2% less DNA). Can we learn about humans by studying chimpanzees?
Can we learn about men by studying women? In other words, is 2% a little or a lot? Before you try to answer
that, think about this: humans differ by only about 15% from rabbits genetically. We think it's reasonable to
say that a rabbit is more than seven times as different from a human female than a human male is, but on the
other hand, is it (or is it not) seven times more different from us as a chimpanzee is?
In the end, we still don't really know and this doesn't matter. Apparently, very small genetic differences can
lead to vastly differing behavior. Each species will behave in its own particular way, regardless of its genetic
similarity to some other species. For a longer or shorter time, the species "dog" has been living in its own
ecological niche and has become adapted to that niche. No matter what it started out as, and no matter when
it stopped being a whatever else it was, the dog is now a dog. Treating him like a wolf will make him just as
unhappy as you would be if everyone treated you like a chimpanzee, or worse yet, the way human men feel
when people treat them like a woman. Meanwhile, let's not forget that even wolves do not live in "dominance
hierarchies."
Forget about the wolf. When you look at your dog, try to see a dog and be ready to learn about him as he is
standing there before you.