I am so totally stunned by your posting Rune for once words fail me!!

Are you the same Rune who poo pooed Shaun Ellis's descriptions of various "ranks" - such as the diffuser - brilliantly described by yourself above.

Your final paragraph is absolutely spot on!! What has caused this massive volte face may I ask?

I suggest you try for once to get facts right.

I have never 'poo pooed' ranks---as I am sure many people will testify to----maybe you are mixing me up with someone else?

OTOH----maybe if you stay dumb........

rune

Not so much the enviroment as the controlling humans IMO. As can be seen from this thread people react very differently to situations their dogs are in.

It is a testament to our dogs that they cope so well with us!

rune

Well I apologise if I have got it wrong, but I am pretty positive that I remember taking the water when I went through Shaun Ellis's descriptions of the different wolf ranks - beta enforcer, diffuser, etc. If I have got it wrong then I sincerely apologise.

Yep, that too . Quite right, dogs are amazing in their coping abilities. Alien environment, alien species the come to live with and yet they adapt and adjust wonderfully and give us so much pleasure, bless 'em

You get it wrong far too often---it might be better to keep quiet or check your facts before posting.

rune

Professor David Macdonald, a leading ethologist, was not best pleased that the wolf documentary films he was involved presented wolves as having organised, co-operative, closely planned hunts. However he has no problem with discussing dominance in various species he has studied.

His view was that it could just be luck and chance that the prey would turn from a wolf on one side, inadvertently then turning into a wolf on the other side.

Or that if one wolf caught hold of a large prey item thereby slowing it down that just made it easier for the others to then pile in, which just happened to reduce the risk for the catcher by further immobilising it, with everyone looking to catch the prey for their own benefits.

I.e.may well have been chance, opportunism, common purpose and luck, not a carefully planned strategy, although presumably learned experience occurred over time

In the same way I have certainly seen dogs "pack hunt" in the same way, with one dog turning the prey, deliberately or accidentally, into another dog on the other side, with it being logical for the dogs to be running either side of the prey as that gives each best access, without their line of sight or angle of attack being obstructed by another dog.

I have also seen park dog fights where it has been two onto one a couple of dogs have attacked another dog by going one to the rear left and one to the front right i.e. opposite diagonals, so the victim cannot defend itself on both sides at once and the attackers alternating their attacks, depending which side was vulnerable at that point.

Back in the early 60s Scott and Fuller described Fox terrier puppies in their study having to be housed in no more than threes as otherwise one puppy would be held at the front and rear by two puppies while a third attacked its middle.

To me this seems pretty similar to the organisation, or lack of organisation, of hunting wolves so I do not entirely subscribe to domestic dogs not having apparently organised pack hunting behaviour.

"Pack" after all is merely a term to describe a more or less affiliated canine group of more than one dog.

I do not agree with a linear hierarchy but there are certainly control (i.e. "dominance"), issues and agenda conflicts between dogs, and between dogs and people, including the poeple they cohabit with.

However these situations are dynamic, based on learning and experience, and the balance of a number of variables at any one time although the more frequently a certain outcome is repeated, the more expectation is set up of that outcome being stablely repeated in future, i.e. a hierarchical structure/expectation begins to emerge.

There are suggestions that it is a submissive hierarchy, not a dominance one but for that to work there has to be someone who less submissive, i.e. more dominant, who is submitted or deferred to.

However I have also on several occasions seen dogs very definitely, deliberately and forceful pin other dogs to the ground (who very clearly were not voluntarily submitting), muzzle pin or paw smack them, all things I have heard it said never happen when arguments against there being such a thing as dominance are put forward.

IMO too much in dogs these days is about fitting behaviour into certain political agendas (as with child rearing), and owe too little to accurate and unbiased observations of very widespread canine interactions, in a wide variety of populations and circumstances. Our interpretation of dog behaviour may change, dog behaviour itself changes very little over time.

Dog training is where cutting edge behavioural science and observational zoology meets the general public! Words are bandied about that mean different things to different people and technical and colloquial meanings get mixed up.

I don’t think a dog wanting to go through a door before you is being dominant but I’d still advise you insist your dogs go through doors and gates after you. Ditto to climbing on the backs of chairs!

I use what I call the practical trainer’s pie chart. 75% of dog behaviour best explained by reference to the wolf, 20% by the broad group or type of dog, 4% by the breed and 1% defying explanation! The exact ratios varying with the individual

The what sort of dog and the behaviour traits of wolves/dogs overlap quite considerably.

Some things are so attached to one breed/group of dogs. The herding from collies which is a constantly recurring problem, the possible recall problems with the dogs bred to be more independant and so on.

rune

Re the use of the word itself, "dominance" I think that once you start using it, people will equate it to being "the boss" and then believe that owners need to do that. Then they will start to be physical etc and once again you get the whole "you have to be physically dominant over your dog, because that's what dogs do". Back to the old linear hierarchy with owner as "alpha".

I am with James O Heare: either the dominance theory re. dogs needs to be put right away, OR there needs to be real research which is unbiased (which it should be anyway!) and about DOGS, not wolves.

Personally, I don't even use the term now. I used to - I used to follow John Fisher's way (ie no harsh stuff but just owner eats before dog, etc). But he did his u turn and I guess I did mine too. I can't even think in that way any more

I think dogs interact just as we do - they do things because they can, because they've learnt they are bigger or stronger or smaller or weaker or whatever. They associate certain things with other things. They take risks or don't take risks. But I can't call that dominance. If we did call THAT dominance, then we'd have to start applying the word to humans and their children etc.

Wys
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