The Wrong Pack Leader Model

Coren's Turnaround: How the Pack Leader Model
of Dog Training Is Flawed

Stanley Coren Makes a Turnaround on the Alpha Theory!
Published on July 22, 2010

This post is a response to Canine Dominance: Is the Concept of the Alpha Dog Valid? by Stanley Coren, Ph.D.

In his book, The Intelligence of Dogs, Stanley Coren was, to all intents and purposes, a firm believer in the alpha theory. In one section of the book he recommends doing a gentler version of the alpha roll (much gentler than the one favored by Cesar Millan), because by rolling a dog over on her back you're ostensibly putting her in a position "that signifies submission to the authority of a dominant member of the pack." His latest article here (see the link above) shows a complete turnaround.

However, I don't think Coren goes quite far enough. So I'm offering those interested in this topic a chance to read one of my earlier articles (with commentary relevant to Coren's recent article), which I think contains a deeper look into why the pack leader model of dog training is flawed. Hence this is not an argument against Coren's most recent post, but an addendum of sorts.

Pack Leader or Predator (originally published May, 22, 2009)

One of the constant bits of advice you'll hear from Cesar Millan on The Dog Whisperer is: "you have to be your dog's pack leader." In fact on his website he even sells T-shirts and hoodies with Pack Leader printed on them. Millan is not alone. For years many dog trainers and training experts have been saying the same thing.
This idea has a lot of appeal for most people. "Yes!" they think.

"That's what's wrong with my relationship with my dog. He doesn't see me as his pack leader!"

Here's the problem though. According to David Mech, the world's leading experts on the behavior of wild wolves, real wolf packs don't have pack leaders. The idea that they do came from studies done on captive packs, culled from various sources, who didn't know one another, and behaved more like rival wolves than true packmates.

Here are some facts about wild wolf behavior (some of which are not mentioned in Coren's article):
No wolf always walks ahead of the group when they're traveling. They take turns. That's a fact.

No wolf always eats before other members of the group. That's a fact.

No wolf always goes through an opening or crosses a threshold before other members of the group. That's a fact.

No wolf ever puts one of his packmates in an alpha roll. That's a fact.

No wolf tells his packmates how to behave. That's a fact.

Dominance displays are rare in wild wolf packs and usually only take place between the mother and father over how to disburse food to their young. The female almost always wins these battles by acting "submissive," which would mean she's supposedly subservient to the male, when she's actually almost always victorious.

These are all facts. And here's what they all add up to:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PACK LEADER.

Yes, it's true that in any animal group there will be one member who is more experienced, more knowledgeable, and who has more animalmagnetism than the others. And most members of the group will tend to be drawn to or gravitate toward that animal.

But animal magnetism -- which is felt on a visceral level -- is something quite different from rank,leadership, and authority -- which are almost purely mental constructs.

There's another factor. In wolf packs it was long believed that the alpha or leadership role changes hands during the hunt. We now know, through the principles of emergence theory, that the reason this seems to happen is simply because one member of the pack will have a better skill set for a certain type of terrain at some point during the hunt, or another wolf may have more emotional flexibility for adjusting to the changes in the prey animal's energy during that part of the hunt, or what's even simpler: one wolf may suddenly be in closer proximity to the prey at certain points, giving the impression that the others are now "following" his leadership when in fact the hunt is always led by the prey. (This is why the Tuscan dogs Coren mentions in his article seem to have as many as 5 pack leaders at a time, an idea which is totally illogical.)

Going back to dogs, in any situation where dogs are in conflict it's always about who has control over resources, i.e., things in the environment.(This is an idea that Coren also discusses, although in a different context.) And I don't know if you've noticed this, but you automatically have more control over your dog's environment than he does. Who has the keys to the car and the house? Who knows how to operate doorknobs? Who knows how to use a can opener? Clearly, if a dog is capable of perceiving things like leadership or superiority, your dog already sees you in that light.

So why doesn't your dog listen to you the way the dogs listen to Cesar Millan? Because he acts more like a predator than a pack leader.

A predator?

Yes. The spatial relationship between two dogs or wolves takes place on the horizontal. Their eyes face each other. They're on the same level. But the spatial relationship between dog and human is quite different. We move through space on the vertical. Our eyes are far above theirs. They look up at us, we look down at them. Spatial relationships -- which are concrete and visceral -- are far more important to dogs than intangibles like leadership or status -- which are more abstract.

This brings up an interesting point about wolves, which is that in the wild the only animal that poses serious threat of deadly harm to a wolf (other than homo sapiens) is the same animal the wolf usually hunts: elk, moose, deer, bison. These animals have sharp horns and hooves that could easily kill or maim a wolf. When a moose, for example, is running away from the wolf, the wolf is energized by its movement, and is highly attracted through his desire to chase and bite. But if a moose finds itself cornered, it turns and stares down at the wolf, brandishing its antlers, causing the wolf to stop dead in his tracks.

In the wolf's experience the prey has now become the predator.

Note the similarities in the spatial dynamics between the moose and wolf on the left, and the dog and man on the right. Essentially the wolf (on the left) and the pet dog (on the right) have a horizontal axis of symmetry while the moose and the man are vertical. Now note how different these two images are in comparison to the two wolves in the center. They're facing each other directly; they're on the same horizontal axis.

I'm not suggesting that a dog thinks his owner is a moose. What I am suggesting is that even there were such a thing as a pack leader in wild wolf packs (which there isn't), and even if dogs had inherited that behavioral tendency from wolves (which they haven't), there is no way a dog could confuse a human being for another dog, i.e., his "pack leader." It simply could not happen. As I said before, the relationships between objects in space is concrete while the idea of the "pack leader" is more abstract and cerebral. So when you add yet another cerebral element -- that the human owner or trainer is a stand-in for or symbolizes the already abstract idea of the pack leader -- you're getting into mental territory that is way beyond what a dog's brain is capable of.

The facts of nature and evolution strongly suggest that wolves, and by extension dogs, have a long adaptive history of being cautious about any animal whose eyes are set in a large head and are looking down at them from above, particularly when that animal is facing them directly. They would feel even more fearful or cautious if that vertical being happened to be coming toward them.

Now think of the way Cesar Millan acts when he enters a room and believes he's being a "pack leader." Picture the way he stands and stares down at a dog. The level of gaze he has seems "magnetic," correct? The dogs are on their "best behavior." Is that because they see him as a pack leader? Of course not. The spatial dynamic is nothing at like that between a supposed pack leader and another dog or wolf. But remember, when a moose suddenly turns and looks down at a wolf, the wolf stops dead in his tracks. And that's exactly how most misbehaving dogs act when Cesar Millan enters a room.

Another of looking at is that when Millan acts the way he does the dog isn't thinking, "I respect your authority and leadership over me so I will submit and do as you ask." It's far more likely that the he's thinking, "What can I do to survive this moment? Show me how I can keep from being injured or killed." So the feeling Millan is actually stimulating in dogs is the polar opposite of magnetism or leadership. It's really just a form of intimidation.

Is Your Dog Dominant? Part I

Are dominance and submission really what they seem?
Published on April 9, 2009

You hear a lot of talk among dog owners, dog trainers, and even the man on the street, about dominance in dogs. What is it, exactly? Is it an instinctive behavioral tendency, an inherited genetictrait, part of a natural power struggle to be the pack leader? We all have our own ideas as to what it means, and we all "know it when we see it," but what are its scientific origins? How does it manifest in behavioral terms? Does it have a sound evolutionary purpose? Or is dominance based on a simple misunderstanding of a dog's true emotional nature?

One clue is that in multiple dog households you often hear owners say that one dog is "dominant" over food, while another may be "alpha" over the couch, and a third may be "the pack leader" when it comes to who's first through the door or who gets to play with which toys. But if dominance were a real genetic behavioral tendency, geared toward ruling the roost, why would it be so specific to food bowls and not to the best sleeping spots and going through doorways and controlling how others play as well? Why wouldn't one dog in a multiple dog pack be dominant about everything? Isn't that his role as the pack leader?

As part of a new trend away from this idea, many experts in animal behavior are now beginning to replace the old terms of dominant and submissive behaviors with the more accurate threatening and non-threatening postures. In other words, where before we'd see a dog acting dominant over food but not over the couch or during play, we now know that he might simply exhibit a series of threatening postures to keep other dogs away from his food bowl in the one case, but not exhibit such postures in the others. Is this true dominance, or is the dog simply engaging in resource guarding:keeping the other dogs from having access to the things that mean the most to him individually? If it's resource guarding, then the behavior is probably caused by anxiety, not by an instinctive need or desire to be the pack leader.

It might clarify things if we knew how the idea of dominant behavior originated.

A Reflexive Dance

Konrad Lorenz was the first to describe the basic difference between dominance and submission in his 1952 book King Solomon's Ring. He stated that when two dogs or wolves are engaged in a conflict, the defeated animal supposedly offers his neck to the other because if he does he'll "never be seriously bitten." He goes on to describe the encounter as follows: "The other growls and grumbles, snaps with his teeth in the empty air and even carries out, without delivering so much as a bite, the movement of shaking something to death. However, this strange inhibition from biting persists only as long as the defeated dog or wolf maintains his attitude of humility."

Hasn't it ever struck you as strange (a word that even Lorenz uses) that when two animals are fighting one would offer himself up to the other to be executed? Why wouldn't he struggle with all his might to survive? Does this dog suddenly have some magical awareness of Ghandi's "peaceful resistance?" Has he studied Zen? Or is something else going on?

That's exactly what biologist Rudolf Schenkel said. "It is always the inferior wolf," Schenkel wrote, "who has his jaws near the neck of his opponent." Schenkel also points out that it's the supposedly dominant wolf or dog who walks away from the fight, making him "more vanquished than victor."

Now that makes sense. The submissive wolf actually has his teeth closer to the throat of his opponent, putting him at a slight advantage. That's why the "dominant" wolf doesn't bite, and that's why he walks away without finishing his enemy off. Yes, the lower wolf is in a weaker position physically, but he's not rolling over on his side in submission or to commitsuicide; he's putting himself in a position that, given the weaker nature of his temperament, feels most natural to him, yet still enables him to defend himself if need be.

The behaviors of both parties probably originated simply for the evolutionary purpose of defusing tension and maintaining harmony between pack mates. Wolves and dogs are group predators. And being a predator of any kind requires that you have a reservoir of aggressive energy available to you at all times. But if you're a group predator, meaning you're a social animal too, nature doesn't want that aggression being directed at your brothers-in-arms, she wants it directed only at prey animals and sometimes at other packs who invade your turf.
(Which again, is a form of resource guarding.)

Meanwhile, it's doubtful that either one of the wolves in Lorenz's example would be consciously aware of his position of advantage or disadvantage, of power or weakness. Instead, it would be much like the interaction between two magnets whose poles counter one another's magnetic energy: the superior wolf has a direct, assertive kind of kinetic energy, which when directed at the inferior wolf causes his indirect energy to spin off in the other direction, both physically and emotionally. If both wolves had a direct and assertive approach, and came toward each other with ears, tails, and shoulders held high, bloodshed would very quickly ensue. (And that's often the case with some dogs and with captive wolves,which we'll cover in the next part.) But nature is wiser than the individual wolf; she wants the pack to get along, so she created this reflexive dance.

So here we have, at the very start of this idea about dominance and submission, what is probably a major misunderstanding committed by the primary architect of the alpha theory, a misunderstanding so major, in fact that it turns out that the "submissive" wolf or dog is in fact controlling the "dominant" one's behavior just as much if not more than the other way around. Yet despite the simple, obvious logic of Rudolf Schenkel's view, Konrad Lorenz' misinterpretation that the weaker wolf is offering his neck because he's surrendering to the "authority" of the stronger wolf, or showing "humility" (as Lorenz) calls it, continues to be handed down to us as "fact" today.

Is Your Dog Dominant? Part II
Wild wolves and captive wolves: not the same animal!
Published on April 10, 2009

Is Your Dog Dominant? Part II

Part of the problem in how the mistaken ideas about dominance and submission in dogs and wolves emerged as scientific "fact" may come from the belief that Konrad Lorenz and others of his time had that the social behavior of captive wolves, being held prisoner in zoos and sanctuaries, would be much the same as it is in wild wolves, who roamed free in the wilderness. This belief may have arisen partly out of scientific necessity because when these initial studies were done wild wolves were almost totally inaccessible.

That's no longer true.

In 1939 Adolph Murie did the first real study on the behaviors of wolves in their natural habitat (in this case, Alaska). In his book The Wolves of Mt. McKinley (1944) Murie wrote, "Because wolves rely mainly on large animals, the pack is an advantageous manner in which to hunt. A lone wolf would ordinarily have difficulty catching sheep, but several wolves working together can hunt sheep rather successfully." Clearly Murie found the pack to be cooperative hunting unit, based on the need to hunt large prey, not a dominance hierarchy. In fact he never even mentions the word dominance when discussing their behavior.

Biologist Raymond Coppinger has said the same thing more recently (in an online discussion hosted by The Washington Post, 01/09/2004). "First of all, not all wolves do pack and packing behavior seems to be a social construct depending on other variables, like prey size. So, in areas where prey might be garbage in the dump, you find wolves in very loose social arrangements. They have them, but they're not a pack."

Dr. L. David Mech (pr. Meech) of the University of Minnesota began his studies of wild wolves in 1958, and has spent his entire career studying them in their natural surroundings. He says, "Most research on the social dynamics of wolf packs ... has been conducted on wolves in captivity. These captive packs were usually composed of an assortment of wolves from various sources placed together and allowed to breed at will. With such assemblages ... dominance labels were probably appropriate. In nature, however, the wolf pack is not such an assemblage. Rather, it is usually a family [which] consists of a pair of breeders and their young offspring.

"Attempting to apply information about the behavior of assemblages of unrelated captive wolves to the familial structure of natural packs has resulted in considerable confusion. The concept of the alpha wolf as a ‘top dog' ruling a group of similar-aged compatriots is particularly misleading." (Mech, L. David. 1999. "Alpha status, dominance, and division of labor in wolf packs," Canadian Journal of Zoology.)

They Aren't the Same Animal

It's clear that while dogs and wolves share a genetic background, there are clear distinctions between them; they're not the same animal. And if Mech is right (and I think he is), then captive wolves and wild wolves aren't the same animal either, at least not when it comes to their social behaviors.

So is there such a thing as dominant behavior in real wolf packs?
Yes, says Mech, though it only occurs in rare instances, and usually over how to disburse food to the young. Yet one of the most striking things about these conflicts is that it's the "submissive" female who almost always triumphs over the "dominant" male. Here's a typical example:

The male has killed a hare and comes trotting back toward the den where, presumably, he wants to eat his kill in peace and safety. As he approaches, the female comes toward him.

His back and neck go up. He stands tall and stiff. She approaches, getting lower to the ground. The closer she comes, the stiffer he stands and the lower she gets.

Then as she comes right up to him, she very nearly rolls over on her back in the way the inferior wolf in the description of "submissive" behavior Konrad Lorenz gave us in King Solomon's Ring. Here, however, she's not on her back and she's not "offering her neck."

So why does she get so low to the ground?

The next part of the drama explains it: crouching in front of her mate, so low to the ground as to almost be on her back, her jaws are actually now in a perfect position to grab the hare right out of the male's mouth! Which is exactly what she does! Then she runs back to her pups, leaving her "husband" standing there, hare-less and wondering what the hell just happened.

This natural behavior in wild wolves is in direct contradiction to the idea that dominance is about being in control. It's not; it's about resource guarding. (The male wants the hare for himself-the female wants it for her pups.) And just as in the battle Lorenz described but misinterpreted, it's the non-threatening animal that actually exerts more control over the situation.

So how can we continue to apply the word dominance to a set of supposedly instinctive behavioral tendencies in dogs and wolves that a) are neither natural nor instinctive, and b) that almost always result in the supposedly dominant animal getting the wrong end of the stick?

(In the final installment I'll explore how anxiety, not the need to dominate others, is the real source of these behavioral tendencies.)

Is Your Dog Dominant? Part III (Conclusion)

Is dominant behavior instinctive or a symptom of social anxiety?
Published on April 13, 2009

In the previous two sections I described how the primary architect of the alpha theory, Konrad Lorenz, misinterpreted the essential dynamic between a "dominant" and "submissive" wolf. In the second I made the point that the initial studies which gave us this now discarded theory were done primarily on captive wolves, whose behaviors are quite different from those seen in the wild: according to David Mech (pr. Meech), the world's leading expert on wolves, when a dominance display does occur, it's usually over how to disburse food to the young, and is almost always won by the "submissive" female.

Dominance displays also erupt sometimes between other wild pack members, but only when they're under certain forms of stress other than those that their evolution has equipped them for.

This brings up an interesting point about the wolves at Wolf Park in Indiana; it's the first place where it was discovered that wolves have no rigid pecking order about who gets to go through an opening first. The explanation is that since these animals are allowed to chase (though not to bite and kill) captive herds of buffalo, their behaviors are more more closely aligned to those of true packs.

As for wild wolves, the Druid Creek Pack in Yellowstone National Park is another clear example of how stress creates aggression. The Druiids originally lived and thrived in British Columbia. Then one day, out of the blue, they were all tranquilized, fitted with electronic tracking collars, and transported by truck and helicopter a thousand miles from home, In other words they went through a very real form of "forced re-location." As a result, during their initial years in the park they exhibited unnatural aggressive behaviors, behaviors which could be rightly analyzed as symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. But as several generations passed, and as the wolves settled into their new environment, they began to behave in a much more harmonious, i.e., truly wolflike manner.

The most obvious difference between the behaviors of the transplanted, semi-wild Druid Pack, the captive wolves at Wolf Park, and the more "pristine" packs studied by Mech and others is one of true wildness: being in harmony with one's environment and being able to hunt large prey animals while acting as a cohesive group. In their early years in Yellowstone the Druids were more survival than group oriented. It's difficult to form relaxed, easygoing social bonds with others when most of your energy is focused on knowing where the hell you are and if you're safe or not. And it's impossible to hunt as a cohesive, cooperative group without forming those kinds of bonds. This is why as the Druids grew more comfortable with their environment they became more like a true pack; their behaviors were more aligned with the mechanisms that nature and evolution have provided for reducing tension and stress in wolves: hunting large prey by working as a team.

The simple truth is, captive wolves don't have access to these mechanisms so they naturally find themselves stuck in survival mode ("Am I safe?") and engage in what appear to be displays of dominance, power struggles, attempts to rise in status, etc. when all they're really doing is releasing their own internal tension and stress in whatever way they can. This same (or at least a similar) process is apparent in both village dogs and domesticated dogs, neither of which hunt large prey on a regular basis.

Now, here's why I think it's so important for dog trainers and owners to finally understand this. After my first novel, A Nose for Murder, came out I got the following e-mail from a reader:
"Thank you SO MUCH for your books! The dog training methods you talk about at first sounded absolutely crazy to me. I paid close attention to what Jack was saying because I have been dealing with this alpha thing since I brought Charley (a miniature poodle) home almost four years ago.

"Charley has been labeled as having Classic Alpha Tendencies. While he can be the most loveable dog on earth, he can morph into Hound of the Baskervilles at a moment's notice, complete with pierce-the-skin biting. What I have always noticed about Charley is that he avoids eye contact at all costs. This became really obvious a few months ago when I adopted Sarge (age 7), also a miniature poodle. Sarge is an eye-contact-type dog, always ready and willing to ‘go,' kind of like Frankie is in the book. He is very coachable. Anyway, I was instructed in how to be the pack leader by my vet and various individuals active in dogs and rescue, and have been faithfully following all but one of those techniques for what seems like forever, with no difference in Charley's behavior.
"And then along come your books and my epiphany. Last night I read a little further into A Nose for Murder and all of a sudden play-training didn't seem quite so crazy. Because it was late, and the dogs were asleep on my bed, I did nothing but think. (I don't have the heart to kick a dog off my bed, which is the one Alpha rule I never followed!) Anyway, this morning when I took the poodles out for their long walk, I played in the snow with them, batting their faces and paws and getting them to chase me around as you had described in your book. It was so much fun!

The dogs had a blast, although if any neighbors heard me out there they might have wanted to dial 911. When we came inside, and I was making their breakfasts, the strangest thing happened: Charley made more eye contact with me after that one play session than he has in the four years since I brought him home!
"I'm at work now, and all I can think of is going home and playing with the dogs! I can't wait to see what happens. There was some kind of sizzle in the air happening this morning, a chemistry that I have never felt and I hated to leave.

"So thank you. I just wanted to let you know that you impacted a few lives today!!!!!!!!"

Charlie's turnaround wasn't easy and it wasn't automatic. It's doubtful he would have felt so free to play with his owner if his pal Sarge hadn't been there too, as a kind of psychic buffer. But he did turn around, and he did so because of a simple yet complete change in his owner's perception of what the problem was: Charlie wasn't acting "dominant" or being alpha, he was just feeling very lonely, scared, and misunderstood. This is where the rubber hits the road. This is where the idea of dominance in dogs can be so destructive: in poor misunderstood little dogs like Charlie.

Karen Overall writes, "The ‘alpha' concept is an outdated one with almost no data to support it. There are no truly ‘submissive' or ‘dominant/alpha' dogs, and by [using] these labels we blind ourselves to all of the interesting information that dogs are communicating to us [with] their postures." ("Interdog aggression: What are the warning signs?" April 1, 2002, DVM Magazine)

This is the terminology we should be using: dominant and submissive behaviors are more rightly called threatening and non-threateningpostures, based on stress and anxiety. It's also why when we use the wolf model for understanding canine behavior, we need to look at the realmodel, that the pack instinct is about releasing tension and stress through hunting large prey as part of a group dynamic. For pet dogs that means having ample opportunity to chase us around in the snow, or on the grass, and to occasionally bite things like tennis balls, Frisbees, and tug rags.

That's where the sizzle in the air that Charlie's owner felt comes from, that strange chemistry she hated to leave and couldn't stop thinking about while she was at work. I'm sure she loved Charlie before that day, as we all love our dogs, but it wasn't until that outing in the snow, where she ran around like a nut, afraid of what thte neighbors might think, that she really fell in love with him for the first time.

Dominance in dogs is not normal, it's not natural; it's nothing more than a symptom of social anxiety. After all, the standard pharmalogical treatment for "dominance aggression" is some form anti-anxiety medication. (It doesn't cure the problem, but it does manage it.)

So if you think your dog is dominant, you might want to take another look. He or she could just be anxious and lonely and need a little more play time with you outdoors.

LCK
www.LeeCharlesKelley.com