It started with the words of dog trainer Konrad Most, writing in 1910:

“In a pack of young dogs fierce fights take place to decide how they are to rank within the pack. And in a pack composed of men and dogs, canine competition for importance in the eyes of the trainer is keen. If this state of affairs is not countered by methods which the canine mind can comprehend, it frequently ends in such animals attacking and seriously injuring not only their trainers, but also other people. As in a pack of dogs, the order of hierarchy in a man and dog combination can only be established by physical force – that is, by an actual struggle in which the man is instantaneously victorious. Such a result can only be brought about by convincing the dog of the absolute physical superiority of the man.”

This highly influential theory has permeated to all levels of the dog world, and has resulted in dog abuse on the grand scale, culminating in atrocities such as the Koehler method, with its horrific recommendations such as beating dogs with rubber hoses and half-drowning them to prevent digging. Even trainers who do not themselves espouse the more violent methods beloved of Koehler and his disciples generally accept the dominance model of canine social behaviour without question. Dogs who are routinely beaten or hung by their owners, and who finally retaliate in self-defence, are written off, over and over again, as ‘dominant’ because they decline to submit peacefully to appalling levels of physical punishment. And the solution offered by most trainers, even today, is more punishment, and still more, until the dog has to be put down because its temperament has been irrevocably ruined.

It’s only in the last decade, with its explosion of interest in the field of canine behaviour and cognition, that anyone has seriously questioned the appropriateness of pretending to be a wolf when interacting with your dog! And the results of this somewhat more rigorous and scientific approach to the subject have been surprising indeed. Here is the truth behind some of the most cherished myths of dogdom:

Myth: Some dogs are naturally dominant, while others are naturally submissive.

Fact: Dominance is an attribute of a relationship, not of an individual. If Rover and Fido have had several fights of which Rover has won the bulk, Fido will start trying to appease Rover whenever Rover threatens him. We can then say that Rover is dominant and that Fido is submissive, but only in the context of Fido and Rover’s relationship. Fido may well be the dominant partner in his relationship with Curly, while Rover may well be the submissive partner in his relationship with Spot. In this way, loose dominance hierarchies develop.

It thus does not make sense to say that Rover is a dominant dog, nor does it make sense to say that dominance is an inherited characteristic. What can be inherited are traits such as large body size and a low threshold for offensive aggression, which will make a dog more likely to succeed in disputes, and thus to become dominant. Dominance is learned, not inherited.

Myth: Dogs, like wolves, have a rigid and linear pack structure.

Fact: Both dogs and wolves have a fairly fluid pack structure. There will generally be separate male and female hierarchies, so a pack will thus have an alpha female as well as an alpha male. Within those hierarchies, however, there is a lot of movement, and most dominance behaviour seems to be situational, with the same dog being, for example, dominant with respect to food resources and submissive with respect to social space.

Myth: Dominance can be tested for and detected in puppies as early as seven weeks.

Fact: At seven weeks, dominance is as fluid as any other temperament characteristic. There is in fact no correlation between social dominance test scores at seven weeks and at sixteen weeks.

Myth: Dominance can be maintained only by physical force.

Fact: Dominance may be established by physical force, but is maintained by, at most, the use of stereotypical threat-appeasement displays. In fact, many canine dominance hierarchies are established and maintained without any force whatsoever, and furthermore, these hierarchies are far more stable and likely to last than those established by means of force.

In fact, it is more accurate to refer to dominance hierarchies as deference hierarchies as they are maintained by the affection and deference of the submissive members toward the alpha rather than by threat displays and violence from the alpha toward the submissive members of the hierarchy. What is important is that the flow of attention and affection should move up the hierarchy rather than down it.

Myth: If your dog jumps up at you, he is trying to dominate you.

Fact: If your dog jumps up at you, he is trying to lick your chin, an act of active submission which developed from the puppy behaviour of licking the mother’s chin to get her to regurgitate food! Next time he jumps up at you, watch his ear position. Chances are, his ears will be pinned back!

Myth: Your dog sees you as another dog and it is essential that you should be perceived as the alpha.

Fact: The relationship between you and your dog is far more complex than a dominance hierarchy can explain. There is a surprising amount of evidence to suggest that humans are a supernormal object of affection to dogs, i.e. that dogs love their humans much more than other dogs and relate to them more deeply than they are capable of relating to other dogs. And the reverse may also be true, which might explain why we’re so crazy about our dogs! Certainly it is true to say that your dog probably does not regard himself either as particularly dominant or as particularly submissive in his relationship to you. Where competition between human and dog emerges, it is more likely to be pseudodominance (or obnoxious submission) than true, status-related dominance.

Myth: Dogs engage in dominance aggression to increase their status.

Fact: It is highly probably that dogs engage in ‘dominance aggression’ to increase their control over threatening or competitive situations. Many dogs who are at the bottom of the hierarchy in terms of social dominance will nevertheless defend a food resource vigorously and successfully against more dominant individuals, thus improving their chances of controlling the food.

In general, improved consistency on your part is an excellent way to improve your dog’s sense of the predictability and controllability of his environment, and thus his psychological well-being. This is probably the reason that so-called status reduction programs work fairly well; not because they’re reducing the dog’s status, but because they’re increasing his confidence in the stability of his environment.

Myth: If you punish or yell at your dog and he growls at you or bites you, he is displaying dominance aggression. If the aggression escalates over time, he’s definitely challenging you for the top position and needs to be put in his place.

Fact: The chances are that in this situation, dominance aggression is being confused with avoidance-motivated aggression (AMA). AMA is the result of repeated negative reinforcement, or escape/avoidance learning. Let’s clarify that a bit.

Suppose you put a dog in a cage divided into two by means of a low partition, and you electrify both sections of floor separately. Now you blow a whistle and pass a charge through the section of floor the dog is on. Sooner or later (probably sooner) he will jump the partition into the other section to try to escape the shock, and because you’re only electrifying one section at a time, he will succeed.

If you repeat the process a few times, in a very short space of time he will learn to jump the partition as soon as he hears the whistle, and will thus manage to avoid the shock altogether, and will show distinct signs of pleasure at having succeeded! (This is, in fact, the best way to use an electronic collar, if you’re going to use one at all.) The behaviour of jumping the partition has been negatively reinforced, ie it is rewarded by the removal of something unpleasant or aversive.

Behaviours trained like this are extremely resistant to extinction, in other words, the dog will keep on jumping, time after time, when he hears that whistle, long after you have disconnected the wires from the cage floor! He has learned that jumping the partition is a successful strategy for avoiding shock.

Now let’s get back to the scenario where your dog bites you when punished.

Let’s assume that you beat him, or do something else which he finds highly unpleasant. Perhaps he has a fairly low genetic threshold for offensive aggression, so he goes for you – and what happens? The chances are that you back off in shock and horror - and your dog has just learned that attacking you is a successful strategy for escaping, and in time avoiding, being beaten!

Now, you might have preceded your beating with a verbal cue, such as “Bad dog!”. The next time your dog hears you say “Bad dog!”, he remembers that this precedes a beating, and that he escaped a beating by attacking you, so this time he attacks pre-emptively and in his mind avoids the beating altogether!

And as more and more incidents of aggression occur, in the dog’s mind he becomes more and more successful, and thus more and more confident. The first couple of times it happened, your dog’s body language might have shown signs of fear-based aggression, but after four or five such “successes”, the chances are that his body language is going to be fairly confident – and he will in all probability be misdiagnosed as dominant aggressive.

It is only at this point that the dog may start to regard himself as “dominant”, and to expect you to submit, but the original problem developed out of frustration, confusion, fear and anger – not status-seeking.

In fact, AMA is thought to account for most cases of “dominance” aggression referred to behaviourists.

So what should I do if I have a dominant-aggressive dog?

First and foremost, make sure that his aggression is not the result of a medical problem. There are various health factors which can influence aggression:

• · Low-tolerance dominance aggression, where a dog will attack with very mild provocation such as being touched on the withers, may in fact be related to a problem in the neo-cortex, although this has not been clearly shown. Many of these dogs respond well to anti-depressants.
•  Many aggressive dogs in fact suffer from hypothyroidism, and thyroid treatment will solve the problem.
• Episodic rage syndrome, sometimes called idiopathic aggression (or aggression of unknown origin) is increasingly believed to be caused by psychomotor epilepsy (seizure of the limbic system). This does not usually show up on a conventional EEG, but can be diagnosed by treating the dog with drugs which first increase and then inhibit epileptic seizure, and monitoring the aggressive behaviour shown.

Do not try to confront or “alpha-roll” your dog when he growls at you. This is a recipe for being bitten.

Become reward-orientated: start rewarding your dog for what you like rather than punishing him for what you don’t like. Make all attention and food conditional on the dog performing some or other small obedience exercise for you. This is the best way I know of “pulling rank”.

Manage the situation: do not let your dog get into the sort of situation which triggers his aggression.

Be consistent in what you reward and what you punish. This improves your dog’s ability to predict and control his environment, and thus reduces his frustration and confusion, and makes aggression less likely. Don’t let him up on your bed one day and then yell at him for climbing up the next day.

If your dog is suffering from AMA, you need to seek professional help. This is a complex condition to resolve, and your behaviourist should recommend techniques such as systematic desensitization, counter-conditioning and response prevention. Do not hire anyone who promises a quick fix or recommends severe aversives straight away.

Don’t kid yourself. An aggressive dog has to be managed for the rest of its life. Never assume that your dog is cured.

The more we learn about dogs, their species-typical behaviour, and the way they learn, the more opportunities we have for finding better, kinder and more effective ways for interacting with them. Once upon a time, the dominance approach was the only one we knew, and we did the best we could with it. But now so many more doors are opening into our dogs’ minds. Let’s go through them, and learn to deserve the love and companionship of these wonderful and unique creatures.