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Dominance – is it appropriate to explain social relationships between dogsand humans?Joyce D. Kesling, CDBCJune 16, 2009
Recently
Science Daily
reported, “Using dominance to explain dog behavior is old hat.” Oneof their references included an article from JVB (2009)
“  
D ominance in domestic dogs –useful construct or bad habit ? 
” The paper is much broader than implied by Science Daily;the following will make clear some of their conclusions.
Associative Learning Theory
The paper suggests stable relationships between dogs can be explained using the “
 principlesof associative learning theory 
” stating relationships develop over time through repeatedencounters with individuals. During these encounters communicative cues from eachindividual is recognized and becomespredictive of negative and positive responses over arange of differing contexts. These encounters are notas simplified as one might think. Thebehavior and cues during each encounter is decided based on each individual’s physiologicaland emotional states at the time the encounter takes placeand context. For example, whenintroducing a new dog into a household with an already stressed animal will greatly influencehow the resident animal responds to the “outsider” and those responses set the stage for howthe relationship between these two individuals will play out over the course of time.
Dominance, the presence of dominance, hierarchies, stable and unstable environments
The authors suggest pups raised in stable pup-adult environments gain advantages when theydevelop social skills with the help of mature canine adults.
This allows a young pup to“learn consistently that competition with adults is unsuccessful” and appeasement behavior avoids conflicts, allowing more tolerance and availability to resources.
Theauthors suggest these behaviors continue as they develop into adults and maintained as a“
dominance relationship
” between youngsters and adults until prior expectancies regardingeach other’s behavior changes.The authors
suggest an “apparent presence” that hierarchies do develop through social interactions in “stable” dog breeding groups
. However, they say, hierarchies do notdevelop in dog groups often undergoing changes and/or including introducingoutsideindividuals. This can explain why introductions of new dogs in already established householdscan be problematic and what puppies experience when transferring from a stable breedingenvironment to human households!Using a comparative wolf analogy,
dominance hierarchies do not exist in non-captive wolf  packs
usually comprised of kin and occasional outsiders. Contrarily, captive wolf situations aremost often comprised of individuals without kinship relations; agonistic behavior betweenindividuals does exist and in some instances, individuals are unable to disperse, they arecaptives oftheir situation. This may explain why captive groups of wolves are carefully placedin packs to avoid as much conflict as possible.The analogy to captive wolves can be used to explain dog behavior once introduced to humanhome environments. Introducing new dogs into a dysfunctional environment that may includepermissive and/or absent owners, lack of rules, boundaries, and training will definitely set adog up to fail.
 
Communication between dogs
When companion dogs meet for the first time there are no previous expectations regardingeach other’s behavior. The relationship between any two individuals is established based oncurrent environmental conditions, contextual relationships, each individual’s physiologicalcondition, and each individual’s prior experiences within other dog dyads (pairs) duringprevious encounters. One can conclude using the “learning-based model” there is no need touse dominance to explain the social interactionbetween two individuals.
Personal experience based on dog-dog social interaction
This seems to correlate with what I have learned through boarding as part of my business.Since offering dog-dog socialization, grouping individuals has to be carefully decided and smalldog versus large dog grouping requires careful supervision. However, I have concludedallowing socialization between small dogs, large dogs, mixed breeds, purebreds, mixed sexes,intact, and neutered dogs under close supervision is beneficial.When observing social deficits, I often attribute the deficit to lacking sufficient adult dogencounters during the early socialization and subsequent juvenile periods. Based on the JVBarticle, dogs benefit from opportunities to learn how to behave from well-socialized adult dogs.Instances where dogs appear to lack sufficient communicative ability with other dogs, couldsuggest their behavior is dependent on how well socialization opportunities were provided,what they learned from those encounters and in what contexts they took place.I have further concluded that because we seem at times to haphazardly introduce dogs intosocial environments and dog-human encounters we are probably causing most of the socialproblems some of our dogs have learned and internalized. I seriously doubt dog parks are agood idea for owners who have little knowledge of dog behavior and this paper reinforcesthisconclusion. I might also suggest dogs attending highly reactive, non-structured puppyclasses would also be a mistake. This further emphasizes that owners be very selective wherethey take their puppies and adolescent dogs for socialization, and considering who they areintroducing them to, and the context and environment where these introductions are takingplace.
How does this play out when introducing new dogs to human homes?
Applying the same learning process based strictly on communication one-step further, we canunderstand why dominance has no place in training and/or establishing our relationship withdogs. If the authors suggest pups in stable breeding groups learn from adult canine parents,then using a “
 parental role model 
” based on these same principles could be applied whencommunication is taking place.Using a “
 parental role response
” means, we need to act as canine adult parents would. Thisdoes not imply “dominance” is necessary in establishing rules, boundaries and trainingmethods. Rather, if you apply the same “
associative learning theory 
” used in explaining howdogs learn to communicate with each other the same rules will apply. When we provide clear positive responses to what our dogs are doing right, while ignoring mistakes and/or providingclear and acceptable negative consequences for undesirable and/or dangerousbehavior, our dogs learn because we are providing them control over their environment through positive andnegative responses.Where owners get into trouble communicating with dogs occurs when using forcefulcommunication signals like “alpha rolls” while erroneously perceiving and/or attempting tothwart their dog’s attempt to dominate them! If dogs perceive communication simply as
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