fair enough it isnt a term I use at all. I think in dog training circles if it was to be used it would have to be standerdised to mean the same thing to everyone. Unfortunatly at the moment most of the GP use the CM definition - which really is anything at all they dont like

I would say someone can have a domineering personality, but as that makes me tend to do the oposite of what they want then that does not make them dom

I am not saying that dogs cannot be dom IN CERTAIN SITUATIONS (for a given definition of dom) but that it isnt helpful in how we think about our dogs (imo)
I dont believe dogs are going to themselves 'ohhooo I better do what he says because he is dom' and I dont believe you can label a dog as dom and confidently be able to say in every situation he will get his own way

If a dog strongly guards bones from other dogs there is no benifit arguing the semantics of if he is dom over the bones, or resource guarding, or whatever
Most likely (IMO) is he really likes bones and has found that others dont try and steal them off him if he acts like a tasmanian devil

and yes of course dogs show displacement and redirection - I dont know what you are getting at - I just see it as being so wound up it has to go somewhere

but of course dogs are totaly smart too and can learn behaviour chains to get their own way - like barking at the door to get the other dog to get up and bark at the door so they can get the comfy seat
dom - or clever and vv funny?

I actually agree with most of what you are saying.

but this is what I mean, if its a simple case of energy going somewhere = take it out on another, then they arent able to put all issues onto one dog consistently to relieve their anxieties if you see what I mean? cos it will go wherever it can!

Not sure I am explaining that right, the way I mean anyway.

Ahh do you mean always picking on the same dog all the time when there are other dogs about too

I would imagine that is more to do with the fact they know the other dog wont fight back as much as other dogs will

same as school bullying - they tend to pick on those who wont fight back

so although it is a reaction to relieve their stress they are still thinking about it - as a pose to proper redirected agression which would just be at the closest thing - in the begining i seen Mia try and attack a twig that touched her when she was stressed

yes, situations where there are more than two dogs and if the one who the agression is normally targetted towards isnt there and the 'agressor' is subject to what they find stressful will not be agressive to anyone else. Only when the other specific dog is there, even when no stressful events etc affect the 'bully'

(I don't think dominant=agressive btw)

Aren't we really talking about personality traits?

In every group of animals - dogs, humans, chimps etc - there are the bullies, the timid, the peacemakers, the 'mother-hens' etc.

When we observe a group of children playing, we can pick the different temperaments up easily, but never label them dominant, submissive etc, but when similar behaviours are observed in a group of animals, we analyse as dominant, submissive etc. Similar behaviours, different labelling.

Yes, a hierarchy of sorts can be seen, but no matter which group we look at, that hierarchy is fluid dependent on what's going on at the time and who is good at what.

I agree with that (bold)

but children are labelled as much as other groups, they dont get called submissive, they get called 'wimps' just a different language that is used really

Actually in a way, the whole thing comes down to personality really, as if you (or your dog) had a different personality you would react differently in different situations compared to how you do which would change the group dynamics altogether

Surely dominance, hierarchy and learning are all inter related?

It isn't an either/or situation.

Put very simplistically, dogs learn how to win by using various strategies, when to defer, and who they are likely to lose against, depending on a range of variables, and from that information arises the hierarchy, based on expectation from learned experience and then generally maintained through ritual, unless a change in circumstances/variables changes the outcome and therefore expectations.

What does change is not dog behaviour but the politics of training and behaviour, hence ignoring older papers, or putting an arbitrary cut off date on references, can lead to being more a reflection of changing politics, rather than always a moving forward of science.

As I said the "new" discoveries in the Bristol paper and Alexander's paper on dominance, repeat Scott and Fuller's findings, from the early 1960s, that were produced from a very much wider sample size of owned dogs, including Alexander's observation that if a group is split and rejoined there may be renewed competition initially. (Of course removing that individual has changed several variables which may or may not disrupt the so-far-established status quo)

The difference is the language used to describe the same findings, with many behaviourists these days having agendas to "disprove" dominance (or in some cases even apparently trying to downplay the existence of aggression by redefining), leading to them describing what I find is a perfect for to a dominance hierarchy as proving there are no dominance hierarchy.

Alexander, further on in her paper, even talks about different height "fitness hills" within the social landscape and harmony being about getting to a point where the individual and the group are in agreement as to where that individual fits into the social landscape and what the height of that individual's fitness hill is.

Surely that is dogs fitting into the social group at different "heights" or rank positions i.e. a dominance hierarchy?!

A roes by any other name, as they say.............

I agree.

rune

Yes, and it becomes a circular argument: personality itself is shaped by experience and learning, which, as you rightly say, is reacted to differently depending on personality, which is affected by the internal and external environment etc etc