I still haven`t heard an explanation of what Alpha means, in human terms. I Take it it means something different when it is used to describe a dog?

I have a small pack (of mixed genders). So do a lot of my friends. We have observed no `dominant male` type behaviour in our dog packs. The structure seems to be flexible. All the properly conducted research seems to lead to the same conclusion.

There is no point comparing wild wolves with domestic dogs because their environment is totally different. Many of the survival traits useful to a wild creature have been bred out of dogs, or have been shaped - such as the collie herding instinct, or pointing with gundogs. These behaviours or specialisations cannot be found in wolves, so the comparisons are pointless.

so - what is an alpha male (in human terms)? From the dog-management perspective that it.

Good Post. We have DOGS, DOGS, DOGS in our homes not wolves. So why are people comparing the way things work in a wolf pack, we don't have wolves. Our dogs have moved on and so should the way humans perceive them.

Hi there - sorry for the delay, I have to sneak on here during the day if and when OH isn't around ! He is currently at the barbers, so I may suddenly have to go !

The term Alpha means Number 1. (Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End).

So, my husband and I are Alpha Male and Alpha Female, we are Number 1 in our household - well actually, I am Number 1, but OH would say otherwise !

We are The Bosses, the Big Cheeses, the Managing Directors, whatever you want to say if you don't like the word Alpha, and many people don't. We say how Tai eats - he has to sit and wait for his food until told he can eat - we say how he behaves on a walk - when on lead, he has to walk calmly and reasonably to heel, looking forward, focussed, not diving off sideways to chase a cat. We set the rules in and out of the house, exactly the same as we would for a child.

Right, so forgetting for the moment about wolves because that seems to cause so much dissent on here, lets take the Alpha dog, an ordinary domesticated dog born an Alpha amongst dogs. For starters, these are very rare, but they do occur. Certain breeds tend to have certain ranks, which makes sense because pedigree breeds all have closed gene pools, so therefore you are going to end up with each pedigree breed far more disposed to be of a similar rank within that breed. A good example is the GSD. The tendency of a male GSD is to be a Beta Enforcer, they make excellent guard dogs and police dogs for this reason. We have a classic example of this living next door to us.

Labradors as a breed tend to be lower ranking Betas, spaniels ditto. Jack Russels are an interesting case, despite their size definitely Beta Enforcers I would say.

That said, moving on now to the scenario of a natural born alpha dog - it could be a male, it could be a female, but let's take a male example. You have yourself an alpha male dog as a pet. How do you handle him? In exactly the same way as you would handle any other dog, but it is going to be harder because HE is an alpha, and YOU are an alpha too ! You will have more challenges and if you show a sign of weakness - you give in one day on a "lie down" command - your'e in trouble. You have asked the dog to lie down, and he stubbornly refuses. With a lower rank, you might get away with the odd ignoring of the bad behaviour, but with your alpha you absolutely must be 100% consistent, if it takes you two hours, you must get your dog to lie down.

So what's the difference between an alpha human and an alpha dog? None whatsoever ... but as the more intelligent animal, we can be alpha to the alpha ! But it is a constant challenge, as we found with Hal.

Hope this helps.

Environment, yes of course, but genetic makeup, no. Dogs are the direct descendents of wolves, written in blood ... literally!

The specialisations created by man of course are not be found in the wolf ... the wolf came first, before the dog! Man took the wolf and manipulated him into the 2000+ breeds that we have today.

The comparisons are therefore not pointless. Almost all of those specialist characteristics that we have bred into each breed to do, is inherited from the wolf. The collie herding instinct is a direct take on a group of wolves hunting, bringing down and killing a prey animal such as a bison. Man has taught the collie through selective breeding to fall short of the kill of course!

I can't say I have ever seen a picture of a wolf pointing, but I see no reason why a wolf shouldn't "point out" a hidden prey to the other wolves by stretching his body forward in that "point". In addition, the lowering of the back would be a natural action of a wolf to bring the body down below the level of long grass. The lifted paw could have merely been the precursor to making a dash towards the prey.

The natural guarding nature of all shepherd dogs is another good example. Wolf packs have "guards" too - SE calls them Beta Sentinels, Beta Enforcers (the soldiers). This is how man first used wolf in a symbiotic relationship - as a Sentinel, to alert the humans to danger.

Retrieving is another wolf characteristic. Catching but not necessarily killing a small prey, to bring back to the youngsters too young to attend a hunt themselves, but old enough to learn how to kill. Hence, the wolf is demonstrating that he can have a very soft mouth too, soft enough to carry a snowshoe hare back to the cubs. Or catching and killing prey, to bring back for the cubs and nursing females.

Hounds of all types are a classic example of wolf pack behaviour, which needs no explanation.

So sorry C&D, but I disagree with you !

Must be the sea air Tassle, because whenever we go down to Hayling Island, Wittering, Wales, wherever, on a beach there are never scraps. I cannot recall a scrap on a beach ever ! I remember a few years ago when we had christmas in New Quay in West Wales, there is a lovely sandy beach here and every day two or three times we would walk Hal down the steep hill onto the beach. One morning, we met two Great Danes, you have never ever seen such large Great Danes. I swear they were bigger than my daughter's Dartmoor pony, they were huge. Anyway, Hal fell in love with one of them - both castrated males - and decided to try his luck. You have never seen such a look of utter bewilderment and surprise on a dog's face ! Hal came up to his hocks, little more, and you could see the Great Dane thinking "is this dog mad? Does he know I could crush him as if he were a fly?". I called Hal away, of course, but the 3 carried on playing quite happily together, no offence taken. The woman who owned the Danes thought it quite amusing, me less so !

You do indeed Heather, dogs who are the direct descendents of wolves !

Look, it's a racist thing. Take an Aborigine. What species is he? Is he a different species from us? No, he is homo sapiens too, but he is a different race from us, a different tribe. Same with the Kalahari Bushman, a Masai warrior, a Pygmy, they are all homo sapiens, of different races. If these races interbreed, they will of course produce human children, who will be mixed race, they are still homo sapiens, they are not some hybrid mix who will not produce fertile young.

The same with wolves and dogs, the difference is purely racial.

The difference between myself and a female Kalahari Bushman is nothing, only one of colour and size and type of hair. We can both live in each other's environments, we can both eat each other's food and live, survive and breed quite happily and healthily - although I wouldn't recommend the appalling western diet of far too much refined carbohydrate to anybody, quite frankly ! I could learn to live like a female Kalaharian, learn her language, her tribal customs etc., and she could do likewise. We are after all the same species, we only share racial differences - which are what I call "the icing on the cake". Our genetic makeup is the same.

So it is with a wild wolf and a domestic dog. Setting aside the legal problems, acceptability of a dog in a wolf pack etc. etc., a wild wolf could live in a domestic situation, breed and produce viable young, and a domestic dog could live in a wolf pack, breed and produce viable young, in theory. In practice of course, particularly with the dog living in a wolf pack, there would be insurmountable issues, but that aside, it is perfectly feasible.

This is why I believe it is plain nonsensical to state that our dogs are not wolves, they are dogs, as if they were a separate species. They are dogs, dogs who are descended from wild wolves, just like we are descended from Hunter Gatherers, cave men, going right back however long it is to that region of Africa out of which we all came. That reminds me, did anyone watch that fascinating programme on Sunday about this very subject? It looks like there were several "waves" or exodus's out of Africa, all of which failed except for one. And it is thanks to this one successful exodus that I am sitting here typing what some of you will doubtless think is a load of spherical objects !! I find that amazing that every single human being, black, white, red, yellow, walking on this planet are the direct descendents of what could be just a handful of the original Africans

Gnasher, Gnasher, Gnasher, the alpha concept you use isn't based on anything that has been accepted as such, and gone before, except your own views. Most views of alpha aren't what yours are

There is either the milder pack leader type view (eat before the dog, etc) or else the harder dominance/force view - yours is neither.

I personally prefer your view but it's not the actual "alpha" view that everyone has always understood.

Really, you know you should have voted No don't you ..

*ducks and runs*

Wys
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