Dominance is Not a Myth. An Essay.
If there is one conversation in the dog world that causes more controversy than any other, it’s Dominance. No matter which professional you speak to, you will always get strong opinions, and as someone who clearly ended up on the Cesar Millan side of the fence, I hear those opinions more than most. The frustrating thing though, is that all of the discussions I have heard against Cesar, or what people believe he says about Dominance, or ‘The Pack’ - these are often widely inaccurate to not only what Cesar teaches, but the consensus of the wider scientific community, outside of the very insular world of dog trainers. If I had a penny for every time I’d heard the line “Dominance Theory has been debunked by the scientist who invented it”(he didn’t) - I could retire and work with dogs for free.
I don’t mind standing by an argument that is well supported, and I will always stand up for anyone who is misrepresented, because there is nothing I hate more than dishonesty. So, with that in mind, it feels like high time we looked at the subject of dominance, pack dynamics and the “Alpha” in the dog world - from the point of view of the actual science, not the narrative that has been created around it.
Spending time with Cesar and his dogs in 2022, during my visit to the DPC. Knowing and spending time with someone personally means that these conversations land differently. My reference is not a TV show - it’s real life, real dogs and real learning.
The First big Problem. What is “Dominance?”
The biggest issue when it comes to this debate, is that people tend to use the word dominance in a lot of different ways, and then take variable definitions to argue a wider and more complex point about dog behaviour. Dominance in reality could refer to a number of different things at any one time, and the interactions between them. So unless we know exactly what we are talking about when we say Dominance, any argument is wasted energy.
The Dictionary definition(s) of Dominance:
When we look at the definitions of dominance at a basic level, the term changes significantly depending on whether we are referring to dominance as part of our own language, Genetics, Ecology or Sociology:
LANGUAGE: power and influence over others.
GENETICS : the phenomenon whereby, in an individual containing two allelic forms of a gene, one is expressed to the exclusion of the other.
ECOLOGY: the predominance of one or more species in a plant (or animal) community.
SOCIOLOGY: controlling, prevailing, or powerful position especially in a social hierarchy
Defining Terms: Dominance Variations when referring to Dogs
The same is true when we look at use of the word dominance to describe dog behaviour. To describe a dog as Dominant could refer to any of the following:
Dominance referring to Sexual Competition: The Dominant Male in a population that successfully mates with a female or group of females.
Dominance referring to Temperament: The most Confident individual in a social group.
Dominance referring to Role: The individual responsible for providing Direction and Protection. The Parent, or other individual responsible for the care and safety of the rest of the group.
Dominance referring to Behaviour: Actions seen as Domineering - Demanding, controlling, challenging, assertive or aggressive.
When it comes to the words we use, Dominance is highly interchangeable, and in conversations that I often have with clients, use of the word dominance varies significantly. The two most common occasions when people describe their dog as being dominant are regarding behaviour that they find challenging towards them (my dog is trying to Dominate me) or behaviour that they find challenging in interactions with other dogs (my dog thinks he’s the dominant male, he keeps challenging other dogs and picking fights with them).
How I’ve heard Cesar use the term Dominance
When Cesar speaks about dogs, he uses different terms to describe the above concepts:
Dominance referring to Sexual Competition: An intact male, the Father of the Puppies
Dominance referring to Temperament: The Front of the Pack Dog. The Pick of the Litter. The Front Energy Dog.
Dominance referring to Role: The Leader of the Pack. Calm Confident Energy.
Dominance referring to Behaviour: A Dominant Dog. (Which is most commonly a Middle of the Pack Dog and sometimes back of the pack dog, that has learned to control Humans with rude, demanding or aggressive behaviour. A psychologically unbalanced dog).
I have absolutely no doubt that many people would argue about the use of terms, or disagree with what phrases are used to describe which phenomenons, but that’s exactly the point. An argument where terms are not agreed is over before it starts, because there is no common understanding. For Cesar, English is his second language, and a language that he didn’t begin to learn until he came to the United States. The terms he uses are the words given to him early in his career by English speaking TV executives, and he attributed those words to different concepts that he observed in dogs. There has never been a point of agreement when it comes to common language for the four different concepts above - only an argument against the use of the word Dominant. Which isn’t much of an argument at all.
Logical Fallacies Derived by definitions
Dominance as permission to dominate:
One of the most common logical fallacies that I see when talking about or criticising ‘Dominance’, is the idea that when someone supports the idea of Dominance in dogs, that they are somehow supporting the idea of Dominance in the very human sense of the word, to dominate or be domineering, to use aggression or physical force to exert control, as a training system when working with dogs.
There is an argument in the reverse that a dog which is behaving in a domineering or aggressive way can only ever be acting out of fear, and cannot ever be seen as dominant, regardless of the intent of the animal to do harm or having learned to control others through force. This creates a significant question around a handlers ability to reasonably defend themselves and deescalate a situation when presented with a dog that has aggressive intent, without being accused of trying to ‘force the dog into submission’. If the dog is successful in using aggression to control its immediate area, then the behaviour is fundamentally reinforced, increasing the likelihood of aggressive behaviour in future. This is true regardless of what originally promoted the aggressive response whether through fear, possessiveness or other behaviour - so the question becomes, does that dog become “Dominant” as an outcome? And if so, by what definition?
Dominance being synonymous with Aggression:
The second logical fallacy is that training methods which use high levels of physical force or aggression are fundamentally derived from this idea of dominance or being a pack Leader, or that people who are using physical force or aggression are doing so with the aim of ‘asserting dominance’ over a dog.
The reality is that whether or not we would like to admit it, physical force and aggression have been used as a method of control with animals long before scientific studies into social dominance ever existed, and the two systems have no direct relationship. Records of these kinds of systems go back hundreds and thousands of years, and Dogs were trained for both World Wars using methodologies that involved significant amounts of compulsion and physical force. For reference, The original study of Dominance and the first common use of the term Alpha was written by David Schenkel in 1947 and David Mech didn’t publish his book “The Wolf: the Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species” Until 1981. System which we now commonly refer as positive reinforcement didn’t really see introduction until the 60’s, and weren’t common place before the 1980’s.
How Dominance actually Presents in dogs
The Original Concept of Linear Heirachy
The original observations of Schenkel, and the later review by David Mech suggested a dominance system in which Dogs established a linear heirarchical structure, through dominance battles that resulted in winners and losers, and a natural order being established. When mech refuted the conclusions of the study, it was done on the basis that:
The animals were housed in captivity with limited space available, so flight and avoidance to prevent aggression was not an option in the closed environment the animals lived, resulting in increased prevalence of fights between individuals.
The animals were not all directly related, with animals from different genetic populations and families housed in the same area.
Multiple generations of animals were living in the same environment, beyond the mating pair and the puppies.
These factors all meant that the behaviour observed could not be attributed to the natural behaviour of Wolves in the Wild. Critics of aversive training, that incorrectly attribute the training metholdogies to dominance as a theory, normally pause the tape at this point. But it’s essential to have a full understanding of what not just what was refuted, but what wasn’t. Mech never refuted that:
The behaviours relating to dominance struggles weren’t observed. (They were observed, and accurate).
The behaviours didn’t demonstrate an accurate representation of behaviour in a captive environment. (In actuality, these behaviours are absolutely commonplace in captivity, which is why caring for captive wolves often requires the transfer of vulnerable wolves to other enclosures and populations to prevent attacks and deaths).
There weren’t a multitude of different observable characteristics that could predict which animals would be more of less dominant, or be more or less likely to breed. (Again, there are multiple observable factors).
To say that dominance has been refuted in entirety because linear hierarchy has been replaced with a complex web of different interlinking factors, is like saying that the concept of weather has been debunked in entirety because we now know that storms don’t happen when Zeus is Angry.
For those who want to follow the science, we don’t get to pick and choose what we pay attention to and what we ignore. Dominance interactions are a vital part of Canine Sociology, and the better we understand them, the more that we can do to help dogs and their owners. When we pretend that dominance doesn’t exist, we wipe out a significant part of the diagnostic process, and we end up attributing behaviours incorrectly. It’s also essential to recognise that for every ‘most dominant’ dog, there is also a ‘least dominant’ dog, and these are more often than not the animals that fall by the wayside.
Interested in a longer conversation about what David Mech has to say? Check out his interview with TCW Trainer Steve Del Savio here:
The Real Modern Understanding of Dominance and pack structure in Wolves and Dogs.
To say that dominance doesn’t exist is academically disingenuous, and another political misdirect on the basis of the studies. We now have a much greater understanding of Wolf behaviour than we did in the 1940’s or the 1980’s. The reality is, as with everything in animal behaviour, multi faceted - and complex in its nature. We now know that:
At its core, a Pack of wolves centres around a breeding pair, originally referred to as the Alpha Male and Female, and their offspring. We now refer to this pair as the breeding Male and Breeding Female.
The size of a Wolf pack is primarily controlled by the size of the primary food source in a given population. In populations where the food source is larger than an individual wolf, larger wolf packs form of multiple individuals, generations, and adopted individuals from other populations. This is observed in populations like the Yellowstone National Park packs that feed on Elk, where up to 40 individuals have been recorded in a social population. In populations where the food source is smaller than an individual wolf, Animals tend to be either solitary or stay as a mating pair. This is observable when looking at arctic wolves that primarily feed on small birds, mammals and rodents.
Within any litter of wolves, there is significant variation in terms of the inherent personalities of the individuals relating to confidence, functional role, behaviour and “Dominance”, in which some puppies will always be more dominant or more submissive in their behaviour to others. These are categorised or given different terms by different people, sometimes simply referred to as temperament, sometimes referred to as Functional Characters - and tend to remain consistent throughout the life of an individual animal. These temperaments in concept have also been referred to as “Front of the Pack”, “Middle of the Pack” and “Back of the Pack”, “Alpha”, “Beta” and “Omega”, and in functional characters there are 9 different names for the different types. These are not the same as a Breeding Male and Female. Whilst interpretations vary, the core agreeable principle is that personality varies significantly between individuals, in a way that is demonstrable throughout their life.
Hierarchical Relationships tend to be sex-dependant, in that male and female heirarchies act largely independent of each other, so that a more dominant male may still behave in a more submissive way to a less dominant female. Typically, the breeding male and female are always dominant, in that puppies do not compete with them, and that assertions of control or aggression as part of parental management are primarily from the adults to the puppies, and not vice versa.
Sexual Competition and dominance relationships tend to display only when Wolves are in their mating season, when sex organs become active and enlarged, whilst the same organs will ‘switch off’ outside of the mating season, with a subsequent reduction in competition and aggression.
Although rare, when sexual challenge and competition does occur, or when a younger male steps in to outcompete an older breeding male, these challenges are absolutely aggressive, and it is common for wolves to be severely injured or killed when these fights occur, and normally result in a wolf being chased out of a population.
Are Wolves and Dogs different or the Same?
For those that understand these dynamics in Wolves, it is very common to hear the rebuttal that Dogs and Wolves are not the same. The question is, how similar or different are Wolves and Dogs, and in what ways?
Speciation
Speciation is officially the point of which two populations of a single species become reproductively isolated, meaning that they are no longer able to produce viable offpsring. In taxonomy, the reality is that many species are separated out on the basis other factors, and this has long created debate when it comes to the distinction between separate species and subspecies. For example, in Wolves, the Grey Wolf is divided into over 25 different subspecies, that are geographically isolated across the world. These subspecies are geographically distinct, but can all breed together to produce viable offspring. Which is what makes them the same species. Domestic Dogs are also recognised as a subspecies of grey wolves by many in the scientific community on this basis, because wolves and Dogs can breed and produce viable ‘hybrid’ offspring. The Saarloos Wolfdog and Czechoslovakian Wolfdog are both dog breeds with a high content of Grey Wolf DNA. Which means that at a genetic level at least, officially Wolves and Dogs are the same species.
Distinctions and their Relation to Dominance in Behaviour
There are however a great many ways in which Wolves and Dogs are distinct, not just in terms of their physiology but their development, body language and behaviour. And several of these have a direct influence on behaviours which we might refer to as dominance characteristics:
Intact females dogs come into season twice a year, at any time of year - whereas wolves only come into season once a year
Intact Male dogs are reproductively active all year round, as opposed to wolves who only become reproductively active once a year, in line with their females.
Dogs tend to physically mature much earlier than Wolves, leaving the parental territory around 6 months old.
Dogs tend to be more confident than wolves, more sociable, but also with a wider range of aggressive propensity depending on breed.
Dogs tend to be significantly more promiscuous than Wolves, and far less likely to mate with the same partner repeatedly.
Wolves tend to manage strict territories, and are far less likely to travel across boundaries than dogs.
Implications
When we look at implications, the single biggest impact that we see when it comes to domestic dogs, is the tendency towards sexual competition, possession, and challenge. When we look at the interactions between dogs in a human world, the tendency for dogs to interact with other animals, of different populations, through different territories, in scenarios where competition is much higher. The dogs we live with every day exist their entire lives in the equivalent of the captive environment of the wolves that were observed by Schenkel in the 1940’s, with optimal health, and usually the maximised opportunity to practice of possessive, territorial or other competitive behaviours.
Does Dog Social Behaviour transfer to Human relationships?
A great many of the behavioural issues that I help dogs and owners with on a day to day basis relate at least in part to these dynamics, if not being a significant or primary factor in a dogs behaviour. The word Dominance doesn’t really do much use in that it doesn’t help anyone understand the intricacies of their own dogs behaviour, but the complex relationship dynamics play a huge part in diagnosis. This however often raises a question - can dominance or other relationship interactions transfer between humans and dogs? Can a dog see a Human being as a “Pack Leader” if they are not a dog?
Domestication and Dominance
When it comes to the requirements for any animals to become domesticated, it is generally considered that there are 6 requirements which need to be fulfilled. Of the thousands of Mammals that live on earth, only 14 species have been fully domesticated, and all share these 6 characteristics when other animals don’t. They are:
Easy for Humans to feed: Typically this means animals that can eat low cost, readily available foods that humans grow, which is why the majority of domestic animals are herbivorous, and why the predatory domestic mammals (dogs and cats) are primarily fed on other domesticated animals.
Rapid Maturity: Animal which grow and reproduce quickly, relative to the lifespans of human beings.
Captive breeding: Able and willing to breed in captivity, and/or for Human beings to be able to replace the parents of domestic animals in the adoption and rearing of young.
Tameness: Animals which are docile and friendly, or do not typically show aggression by nature, or are unsafe to keep around Humans.
Calm disposition: Not skittish nervous or likely to panic.
Social Hierarchy - animals which live in groups with overlapping territories, and essentially in which humans are able to insert themselves into the hierarchy as the dominant individual, as opposed to the animal.
There are a huge number of examples of animals which fulfil some, but not all of these characteristics. Zebra for example have never been domesticated because they are significantly more aggressive than horses. Fish have achieved varying levels of domestication, but it is not possible for humans to insert themselves into the social structure of a fish. Birds of prey have the ability to imprint on humans and recognise them as parents, but can be aggressive, mature slowly, and are difficult for humans to feed (compared to Chickens for example). And when looking at large African Mammals, Elephants are typically docile, and calm, and do allow humans to insert themselves into hierarchy when raised as calves, but mature slowly, do not breed easily in captivity, and are of course dangerous due to their size. It has been demonstrated that a Hippopotamus by comparison will never submit to the Authority of a human, even when raised as calves.
The point here, is that when it comes to dogs, not only is it the case that Dogs recognise and allow Humans to place themselves into social hierarchy, and into the parental role during adoption but that these characteristics are actually essential to the existence of domestic dogs as a group. These traits are part of a wider picture of behaviours that enabled dogs to domesticate themselves to humans, so deny the idea of dogs recognising humans as part of their social structure of family is to deny the possibility of their domestication in entirety.
What it means to trust - no tools, just relationship.
Evolution of Dogs and Dominance
When we look at the prevailing theories of Domestication in dogs, and the evolution of dogs as species/ subspecies, from their common ancestor with Grey Wolves - modern scientific perspective has also changed. Whilst there is a romanticism to the idea of a cave man somehow finding or capturing a wolf pup and raising it as a loyal companion, the reality is that Wolves are significantly different to dogs in their behaviour and characteristics - and it is widely recognised that there is no way that any two ‘single generation’ individuals could have simply learned to coincide.
In reality, it appears that there were a series of key genetic/evolutionary changes to dog psychology, that made them less of a risk to early humans, and more able to receive the benefits of their proximity. One change, for example - was the shift from wolves aggressively competing over a humans successful ‘kill’ in order to eat - vs making the decision to wait and give respectful distance, whilst humans fed, before moving in to share in the leftovers. This one single change in behaviour would have meant that wolves represented far less of a threat, and opened the opportunity for cross species interactions that would have allowed dogs to further evolve alongside human beings. This particular dynamic is almost unique to our relationship to other species, in that it has allowed dogs to evolve for hundreds of thousands of years - directly alongside us. More than any other species, dogs have been our evolutionary neighbour - and that has allowed a remarkable level of communication and understanding, social bonding and of course a number of interactions that relate to different expressions or interpretations of ‘dominance’.
Conclusions
So. What does all of this mean? And how do we apply it to our relationship with our dogs and their learning? In my view, there are a few key principles that have to be respected when working with any dog:
Individuality & Compatibility. Assess every dog as an individual, being mindful of the personality and temperament that you are working with - and how that contrasts with your own. Be willing to approach your relationship to every dog differently so that you behave in a way that is most compatible to them, their needs, their safety and their success. In practice, it means that you don’t get to choose to behave how you want with any dog. Some dogs will need you to be more boundaried and confident - some will need you to be more patient, gentle and calm. Some dogs will need you to relax and let go of your need to control - and some dogs will require you to step up and put controls in place. There will be dogs that are naturally more compatible with you than others - and for the dogs that aren’t as compatible, you will be challenged to grow as a person. That responsibility is on you.
Respect and adjust for social norms. Your dog may be the most intimating personality or temperament in the park, or they may be the dog that is most easily overwhelmed. When going into social situations, respect that your dog will fall somewhere on a spectrum of sociability and resilience to other people and dogs around them - and it is your responsibility as their owner to guide them through those interactions. Some dogs will be more pushy, competitive, invasive or excitable. Some dogs will want to be left alone. Some dogs will want to manage or control their environment. Respect the dog that you have and accept the adjustments you need to make for those around you.
Don’t confuse the human and animal versions of leadership. As human beings, we are notoriously bad at leading others in a way that is mutually beneficial - particularly now that we as a society spend so much time in big corporations and institutions that reward a race to the top. Dogs do not lead the way that humans do. Dogs do not think the way that humans do. Learn how to receive the world the way that a dog does, and lead in a way that makes sense to them.
