Is Dominance A Useful Concept In Dog Behavior?

Is dominance a useful concept in dog behavior?  In the past, much of our thoughts about dominance in dogs came from captive wolf populations where there was a linear dominance hierarchy, with an alpha wolf who was most dominant, then a beta wolf who was dominant over everyone except the alpha, and so on down the line, until we got to the omega wolf who was dominant over no one.

When wild wolves were studied, the concept of dominance in wolves became much looser, because wild wolf social groups are either family units or extended family units (parents, young, and siblings of parents), and adult wolves tend to assume more dominant positions over the younger wolves, but otherwise the situation is fairly fluid. (See the March 19, 2010 post on this blog by Dr. Suzanne Hetts on dominance myths, and the YouTube video by Dr. L. David Mech on wolf dominance at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNtFgdwTsbU).

But our training methods of dogs go back to the concepts of dominance derived from captive wolf groups.

 Some of our training methods assume that we have to be physically dominant over our dogs. This involves in extreme cases the alpha roll, or rolling the dog over on his back and standing over him (something that I personally do not recommend, as it is a way to get bitten and possibly traumatize everyone concerned, including the dog).  Other methods involve pushing the dog down for a "sit" or a "down" command, and yanking a dog around on a leash.

Non-physical methods include giving dogs less priority of access to resources such as food or space.  For example, a dog might be required to wait before getting food, or might be expected to tolerate having her food bowl taken away by her people half-way through her dinner without her showing any signs of aggression.

But dogs are not wolves, even though genetically they share more than 99 percent of their genes with wolves.

And because dogs have been domesticated for a long time, it is hard to get humans out of the equation and find out what is normal for social groups of dogs when they are not interacting with people.

Surprisingly few studies have looked at the social interactions within dog packs that have not been associated with people.

A recent study looked at dominance interactions in a free-ranging social group of dogs that had relatively little contact with humans in the suburbs of Rome, Italy (Cafazzo, S. et al. 2010. Dominance in relation to age, sex, and competitive contexts in a group of domestic dogs. Behavioral Ecology 21: 443-455).

The dog social group had 27-40 dogs, and was observed for a total of 15 months. During that time, the composition of the group changed by some dogs leaving, others joining the social group, some dogs dying, and some pups being born to females.   The authors of the study present their results based on observations of 6 adult males, 5 adult females, 1 subadult female, 4 subadult males, 5 juvenile females and 6 juvenile males, or 27 dogs in all.

The authors characterized dominance interactions as two kinds: agonistic dominance, and formal dominance. They defined agonistic dominance as situations where one dog acts aggressively and the other dog acts submissively. They defined formal dominance as situations where one dog gives another dog a submissive signal without the first dog showing any aggression.  They studied dominance interactions under the following conditions:  1) when there were no resources for the dogs to compete; 2) when the dogs had to compete over food; 2) when the male dogs had to compete over receptive females.

The bottom line in this study is that dominant status did not always correlate well with aggression.  The aggressive dogs were not necessarily the most dominant in terms of submission of other dogs when there was no competition for food or females. 

Dominant status did correlate well with the formal dominance described by the authors, where one dog produced signals that another dog responded to with submission.  Such formal dominance gave dogs priority of access to food when they were competing, and gave some males priority of access to receptive females.

So what does this study mean for us?

One take-home message is that you don't need to be aggressive with your dog for her to acknowledge that you are more dominant (or at least, for you to have higher status than your dog).  All you need to do is have the right kind of signals that your dog understands. In other words you have to learn to communicate with your dog rather than beat her into submission.

Another take-home message is that despite our long association with dogs, we still don't really know how they think.  We know what dominance means to us, but we are still struggling to find out what it means to dogs, and whether our idea of dominance is even a meaningful concept for our furry friends.

--Con Slobodchikoff

Comments

[Randall Johnson]

I"'m glad to see this issue being revisited with FRESH EYES! I never understood, from the beginning, why anyone would try to apply the perceived social behavior of wolves to that of dogs. Dogs have a long history of living within human groups; wolves do not! This age-old interspecies association has exerted complex, subtle influences on both species that need to be taken into consideration when discussing any aspect of dogs' social behavior.
The traditional model of dominance always struck me as being simplistic and Nature is anything but simple! Furthermore, relationships among social mammals ARE NOT STATIC! There is a continuous 'ebb and flow' going on all the time. And why some professional dog trainers adopted this erroneous model in their training methods defied my ability to understand. I would NEVER consider using their methods with any of the dogs that have been part of my family because I genuinely liked and respected each one of them. Depriving them of essential resources or using brute force to show our dominance over them...well, as far as I'm concerned, that's nothing but animal cruelty and mistreatment and should be punished.
I applaud Cafazzo, et al. for opening the door to truer version of dog dominance and would like to add that subscribers like "Magnoliasouth" and "Starr Ladehoff" have important contributions to make to this discussion "

[magnoliasouth]

I've also seen cooperative Alpha systems with my dogs. That's probably not a good way to describe it and if there is a better term, please let me know.

However, one dog is Alpha when it comes to eating first. Another separate dog is Alpha when it comes to drinking water. Yet another dog is Alpha when it comes to sleeping on a favored dog bed that all want to sleep on. Another dog is Alpha when it comes to play time (they only play when one dog says it's okay).

It's really very interesting. I too believe that it is much more complicated than any one study could ever provide. I also feel that they are much more intelligent than they are given credit for.

Our measure of intelligence (stupid IQ tests, etc.) is frivolous. We only use these to pat ourselves on our backs, marveling over how we dominate all the other species of this earth. It's, quite frankly, embarrassing.

[Starr Ladehoff]

I personally believe the concept of dominance in dogs is much more complicated than what most people believe. Some dogs believed to be alpha can also act "submissively" with subordinate dogs in certain situations. I see this in my own family unit of five dogs. It is definitely much more fluid than originally thought.