If your dog trusts you, she will do anything you ask. If you eliminate fear of certain things: lack of food, for example, your dog will not growl when you try to take it away. She knows you will give her more. Same with toys, taking things out of her mouth etc.

In this instance, acting aggressively and taking away your dogs resources will directly effect how she will act towards you doing it in the future. Aggression breeds aggression.

I had an issue with my dog for a while. She would ‘steal’ things off the coffee table and run away with them. I soon realized when I stepped back and looked at the situation objectively (I was pretty mad at her) that she only took things when I was sitting at my computer desk…. she was bored. And what did I do when I noticed she had taken off with another hair scrunchie? I ran into the other room chasing her and yelling! I was teaching my dog that taking things=excitement.

So, basically, I submit that dog training is all about cause & effect. If you try to look at a situation objectively and rationally and leave emotions out of it, you’ll likely find that your dog simply does what feels good to her, or what gets her what she wants, whether that something is attention (negative or positive), a treat, or a pet on the head.

I honestly haven’t seen a single thing that had to do with dominance theory.

In his book, “Dog Sense”, Animal Behaviourist John Bradshaw suggests an alternative behaviour theory to our common use of Dominance. He calls it Resource Holding Potential. It’s a system we are all familiar with – a dog decides how much they want a particular resource (e.g., toy, food, space, etc.) and then assesses their ability to take and hold that resource versus any competition for the same resource.

Will dogs fight for what they want? Hell yes! Does that make them want to be my “leader”? I hardly think so. This article was not intended to make the claim that aggressive behaviour doesn’t occur in dogs. That would be absurd. My intent, instead, was to stop over-simplifying what is happening in relationship to dogs in the hope of finding better ways of resolving, or better still, avoiding conflict through behaviour modification. To do that, I think we should understand what we’re dealing with first before applying a solution.

This is not about jargon or political correctness. It’s about accuracy and dealing with the REAL issues with our dogs and not finding convenient explanations and imposing half-baked solutions.

That’s my view of things. Your mileage may vary.
Eric

I agree that dogs do not display a de-facto strict social hierarchy. However, in an attempt to promote a specific agenda in dog training, some people have exaggerated this fact to mean that dogs have no sense of order or hierarchy at all. In fact, I would argue from experience that pairs or even small familiar groups of dogs frequently ARE aware of which dog among them will usually take priority or “win” the resource in a conflict-of-interest situation. I would also argue that it’s possible for a dog to be confident enough to think that he or she has priority over a human as well — especially when a person demonstrates that they can be easily chased away or intimidated by gestures such as growling.

‘Dominance’ used to be the correct term not for the constant, micromanaging ‘leadership’ of a group of social animals, but as a term to describe who usually ‘won’ in conflict of interest situations. Maybe it still is, outside of the highly-politicized dog training never-never land. OK, fine, so I won’t use that forbidden “d-word” to describe a dog who confidently attempts to take priority over other dogs or people. So, what is the correct, politically acceptable term for this situation?