I take it from this post & your blog you are a dominance theory fan.

The original "Dominance"theory evolved from studies of wolf packs that had/have been formed not by nature in the wild, but by man in captivity. David Mech, has possibly more experience of studying wolf packs than anyone else in the world & he has changed his views on their structure & no longer regards the senior pack members as "Alphas".

The true wolf pack structure is in fact not a random collection of unrelated wolves amougst whom a male & a female"fight"their way to leadership by force, the real wild wolf packs consist of a family group & the senior members are the parents of all of the rest of the pack(in very unusual circumstances there ave been cases of single junveniles joining established packs-but this is very rare)

Packs are formed when a pair sexually mature male & female wolves join up & start breeding, the pack develops with subsequent litters. When the offspring reach maturity they leave their pack & form their own. This doesn't happen in all packs some wolves remain within pack. There are only one breeding pair & the adult males do not fight to breed with the senior female.

There are very few "packs"of dogs who have the same make up & therefore to compare wolf pack behaviour(even that of captive packs)is seriously flawed & is accepted as being flawed throughout the world.

Parents of puppies do not "Alpha"roll them, they will pin them down wit a paw or their mouth & usually the puppy will go into the appeasement position on it's back. There is no real aggression & it certainly isn't to "prove"domination"over them. It is part of the learning process of acceptable behaviour.

I don't base this on scientists theories & studies, but from my own experiences with multidog households over the past 50+ years.

A truly "dominant"dog actually does very little to "rule"their "pack"members. They sort out behaviour by a look & body posture & possible a very low "grump" or growl.

One of the reasons that many people have problems with bitches of approximately the same age living together is because they in a natural pack would have their mother there to provide the discipline.

Our dogs live in a very artifical environs, which should be mutually benefical to both dog & owner, with the human giving guidance & structure-not domination & force

Rich this is just one of a number of studies reaching the same conclusions . Alexandra Semyonova in her study ''The Social Organization of the Domestic Dog A Longitudinal Study of Domestic Canine Behavior and the Ontogeny of Canine Social Systems'' observed dogs in their natural surroundings, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for fourteen years , you can't get more practical than that. She reached similar conclusions as the new study.

Joedee is absolutely right and this is why I have such a problem with the concept of the Alpha roll.

A dog may try to pin another dog and that dog will flee, fight back or submit voluntarily by adopting the appeasement position on its back.

When humans force a dog into submission with the so called alpha roll , the dog is not submitting voluntarily, it is being forced to do something which is totally unnatural and this can have disastrous consequences for the behaviour of that dog which is being taught humans are aggressive and not to be trusted.

Like Joedee when I say this I base my conclusion on 50 years of observing and working with dogs not just on a study .
The latest study just confirms what many of us came to realise over many years about the Dominance Theory.

Hi Gnasher,

If you read the link carefully there was also a bit that said "... and re-analysing data from previous feral dog observations".
I don't think the paper would have managed to be published in a respected refereed scientific journal unless a statistical factor analysis had been done (ie 'science') to cross check both data groups showed the same behaviour.

The scientific paper just says that wolf-like dominance hierarchies do not exist for dogs (therefore whole "alpha-male"/"pack leader" concepts are based on incorrect folklaw) - instead there are much more complex social group interactions.
(ps Another report said the original 50 year old "alpha-male" wolf research that kicked the whole thing off was based soley on a single CAPTIVE wolf group, so was highly flawed in itself - but I guess scientific papers weren't checked before being published in those days.)

Anyone can terrorise/torture an animal into not doing a behaviour (possible not daring to do any behaviour, even what would be normal dog behaviour)
The CM link I found most uncomfortable described him stopping blood flow to the brain of a struggling dog by strangling the dog by it's collar - surely just a recipe for the dog attacking anyone who reached for it's collar in the future.

MikeC

It's actually quite likely.

One of the fallout problems with this kind of "training" is that the dog does become fearful of doing anything much, it's one reason some owners swear by it as they have a dog who to them is well behaved, calm etc....it's actually not sure what it was punished for and sees the owner as unpredictable and so opts for as little movement as possible

(this effect could be seen in the chimpanzee who was taken away from the horrible Mary Chipperfield. It was a perfect example for those who could take the trouble to see it ...)

Wys
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I don't believe it is flawed, as other dogs have also been researched on...Casey and Blackwell certainly know how to do "un" flawed studies and if there is a flaw or problem, they have probably shown it themselves in the discussion at the end.... (not read it yet myself...)

Wys
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Hi Spot ! Lot's to answer !

Firstly, I thought the term "kennel stressed" does not mean literally "stressed by living in a kennel". I thought it meant a dog who was stressed out by one or all of a whole range of issues - one of which could be stressed by living in a kennel.

Whenever I have visited a rescue home, which I hate doing because you just want to take every one home with you, and you can't, I can honestly say hand on heart there has never ever been a dog there who has not been either terrified, hysterical, aggressive, submissive, desperate, pleading or ... worst of all ... totally withdrawn, sitting shivering in the corner having just given up. The one that has given up hoping that one day someone is going to adopt HIM. Maybe I have only been to rescue places that take in severe cases, but my personal experience of ALL rescues, even my own Tai who settled in with us just like that and bonded with us immediately, and who came from a loving home etc. etc. - even he still had one or two settling in type issues.

Now, I would agree that not all rescues have problems. In my own experience, they are so damned happy to be in a secure, loving home with good food that they mostly settle in extremely well, albeit frequently with issues. It is the period WHILST they are in the rescue home that they will be traumatised possibly, certainly unbalanced, and therefore very definitely not good subject matter for research of this type.

Feral dogs definitely IMO would be a lot better, but still not balanced, because certainly in this country feral dogs are not the norm. Far better would be to have a mix ... which of course is far more difficult for logistical reasons, particularly with feral dogs. Which is doubtless why the researchers used dogs in this particular rescue home ... a captive audience, literally.

Rescued dogs, as opposed to Rescue dogs still living in the rescue home, are very definitely not always vicious, traumatised, unbalanced wild animals, Spot, I quite agree. And once settled into their new loving homes, very definitely good subject material for this type of research. But whilst still living IN a rescue facility? Definitely not IMO.

"“In our referral clinic we very often see dogs which have learnt to show aggression to avoid anticipated punishment. .”"


This is to be expected and has been touched on by various researchers as far back as the 60s.

I do not think it is scientific though, Mike, to take an unrepresentative group of dogs ... feral ... and another unrepresentative group of dogs ... rescues in a rescue home ... and base scientific research on these two groups, then !

Neither is representative of happy, well socialised, well balanced dogs.

I would like you to show me the link where CM strangles a dog such that the blood flow is disrupted to the dog's brain !! That sounds horrendous. I have watched every single episode almost of the Dog Whisperer, some many times over, and I do not recall that one. The link would be much appreciated, thanks.

Feral dogs though Wys. Not sure they are a good source of material. I have nothing against feral dogs, but they do not represent the "norm".

That's interesting, that there is a discussion with Casey & Blackwell at the end. I hope to get this paper printed off so I can read it, but I am doing half a dozen things at once today !