Is the adult golden dominant to the puppy in this context?
Patricia McConnell continues her discussion of dominance:
This time it’s within the context of domestic dogs.
As with all things with dogs, it is complex– even contradictory.
I don’t think the way that certain people use the term dominance is very use the term.
Dogs are capable of learning social mores and rules. I think that’s where we should put our focus instead of using this concept.
I wish we had a better word other than “dominance,” because the term has been horribly corrupted. The view that this is all dogs think about and the only way to relate to them is as the boss man is a little bit dated.
I would use the term for the relationship between dogs and people as more of a teacher-student partnership. The way dogs relate to each other is more or less this way. One dog becomes the wise elder of the group, but because situations change,who the wise elder is changes accordingly.
That’s what I’ve observed from my own dogs.
For example, my grandpa had a beagle x that ruled the roost when he was around her.
As soon as he was gone, she was the low dog on the totem poll.
These relationships are infinitely more complex than Schjelderup-Ebbe’s pecking order in chickens. It is more give and take than one would assume from reading dog pop psychology.
Most of the pop discussion on dog dominance are extreme violations of Morgan’s Canon. It is assuming that dogs have this understanding their place in the world. And like Pinky and the Brain, they begin every night with this discussion:
Pinky: “Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?”
The Brain: “The same thing we do every night, Pinky—try to take over the world!”
The model she describes in Bradshaw is far more parsimonious. We know that dogs are great associative learners. They may be better at it than wolves are, and that is the main function that drives dog behavior rather than these assumed innate drives to control everything and everyone.
***
Now, it is possible to take this too far. Raymond Coppinger thinks that dogs are not social animals that live in groups. They are actually very much social animals.
It’s just what societies they develop are much more variable than any one would see in wild animals.
I know that horses are very much ruled by a linear hierarchy, but I’ve not seen that same social arrangement in dogs.
But it is easy to project these relations onto dogs, because dogs do tend allow one main dog to act as the “elder statesman.”
But it is unlikely that this main dog maintains absolute authority in all situations.
In horses, you get something like this, but that’s because their societies are much more strongly driven by instincts. Horse societies operate on a dominant mare who leads the other mares, and a stallion who herds his harem around. That’s because horses breed in harems, and the band stallion is forever being overthrown. Their lives are always in social chaos in the wild. They need strict linear hierarchies just to maintain order
Dogs social relationships are not so written in stone. Their social lives are not so dramatic, and they are much more removed from the wild than horses are. Their lives include us much more intimately, and associative learning has a much greater influence on what animals they will become.
Dogs are not tabula rasas, but they aren’t wild animals that are driven by instinct alone. What they become is much more a result of what we do than what they are. That’s what’s different between wolves and dogs. Dogs can adapt to our world. Wolves are still molded by their natural history.
Dogs are what we make them. It’s true in breeding.
And it’s true in training.
If I may say this : just like with the “dominance” term, Teacher-Student consideration may turn into the “superior-inferior” relation… so we’d have to go over words and look into the relation and interrelation between human and animal behavior. I’d rather say that we can build on a reciprocity of teaching-learning as I teach things that the dog learns but that same dog teaches me things too. Before taching any “fonctional” elements, don’t we teach to each other (human-dog) who we are ? Then, that understanding leads us to teach things to do and the dog teaches us what are his limits, his strenghts, etc.
Of course, this is my humble opinion…
I’m with ya Djanick. My dogs have taught me more (in some instances) than people have. To be honest, we (my dogs and I) have a tendency to switch places quite often when the subject of danger arises. While in the city and outside of the yard she MUST come under my authority for her very life but then again, at 2 in the morning when some stranger knocks at my door I am more than happy to let her take lead. She smells more, senses more, hears better than I ever can. Out in the woods, lake, away from the city I again am happy to let her be in charge of my daughters and I. I would have to say our relationship is one of camaraderie or mutual friendship. Oddly, most of the time I feel the only reason I am in charge is simply because I have a checkbook and thumbs!
You may just have to invent a new word here retrieverman! lol
Maybe this analogy is better:
In traditional societies, the elders are respected, not because the elders are harsh but because the elders know things.
It’s the same relationship one has to one’s grandparents or to one’s parents once one has reached maturity.
I found both your analogies appropriate and I also agree with the reciprocal nature of both.
With my dogs it has always been something of a mutualistic relationship once they’ve reached a certain age.
This principle has a relation with knowledge and learning but like I said previously, it is not a one way relation like you’re describing with your example (which isn’t bad at all). Communication is based on an exchange : one is listening while the other is talking (not necesserally with words) and the other way around.
Sorry, I just understood what you ment… and we’re saying the same ! I apollogize for replying on your comment…
Quick! Someone disagree or the thread will die!
Joke! I just had to….
let’s talk about pit bulls!
;-)
It’s pretty hard to disagree with McConnell.. she’s got those credentials, savvy, intelligence and experience, etc. Plus she’s so damned NICE!
LOL or wolf hybrids! And, your right Emily….Wait! I’m agreeing again! Damn!
I’m so glad she decided to do these blog posts. She’s awesome.
LOL
Overused by some, demonized by others. Self-serving people in both camps use it as a sort of catch-all.
I still like it just fine when used intelligently.
Ruth, can you do a thing on your blog on which ways the term is used intelligently? or post here? I’d like to read your thoughts
That’s a great idea. Thank you. I’m going to get to work on that.
Okay, I’ll disagree on the fact that there is no possible communication what so ever with an animal and that no dog can teach something to a human. I will support stupidity and incompetence so the world can level down ! mouahahahah ! (Pinky and Brain are having the wrong effect on me ! ahahah !)
I like “teammates.”
Sounds good !
The fact dogs are carnivores gives them surely certain flexibility in behavior compared to the horses, who tho’ being domesticated for a long ago, still have very strong behavioral schemas to avoid themselves from becoming a pray animal for some beast’s plate.
I think it happens more that horses are harem breeders, and no wild dog (save some populations of red foxes).
The breeding male changes regularly, and mares are stolen back and forth.
Harem cohesion is very hard to maintain without a strict hierarchy.
Carnivores were once on the top of the world. Some of them even developed the fine social tactics to make living. To human eye, they seemed to be the most intelligent on earth, because they forced, or dominated, or let’s say, ruled, over other species.
Their domination matched very well with the domination the humans do now.
>> Carnivores were once on the top of the world.
Some… developed… social tactics to make living.
To human(s) they seemed to be the most intelligent on earth, because they forced or dominated or… ruled-over other species. <
nope, don;t buy it.
wolves don;t RULE buffalo or elk or caribou – the elk need predators to keep them fit, fleet, and in balance with their environs; the wolves need the elk to eat.
when wolves were re-introduced to Yellowstone, one of the earliest species to benefit was the native trout; ELK had been stripping all the vegetation from the stream banks, loafing near the water like cattle in a pasture, defecating and urinating on the banks, breaking down the banks to erosion, opening the water to more sunlight and heat, increasing the turbidity and silting the gravel-beds.
wolves aren;t stoopid; elk need water, so wolves check watercourses for the odd stray or the small band, feeding or drinking – or standing in the water to avoid the flies and mozzies.
BUT – the wolves don;t eat the stream-bank plants, rip the bank up with cloven hooves, yank young willows out roots and all.
the elk began to send less-time loafing by the creeks – and more time moving, and in deeper cover. the willows, alders, and other streamside brush and trees began to recover; the banks stopped falling into the streams; the water got clearer and cooler; the gravel-beds were bright and stony again.
and the trout came back.
no species in an ecosystem is IN * CHARGE of anybody; but they all intermesh and are dependent on one another.
thats the problem with messing with ecosystems; an Old-Growth forest is such a mass of interdependent species, from fungi that help trees to feed themselves, to bears that feed the trees with salmon.
U cannot just stick a hand into the web, rip-out the parts U don;t think are important, and use them as U will. ripping-out ONLY the *mature* (a-hem, read commercially most-valuable, high-yield largest-trunk trees) equals TAKING all the trees that have been accruing a dense living world all their past 500 to 1000 years of life – from the soil once deposited on their branches as dust, to the complex lichens, mosses, algae and fungi on the barks and branches, to the soil-organisms among the roots all the way from trunk to rhizome, drip-line to tree-top… EVERYthing. one tree could have 500 to 700 species associated with it – cut it down, and they are gone.
and if that species *exists* ONLY among the oldest of the old trees… then what?
http://tinyurl.com/ya5zt2e
we cannot pick and choose; we save environments – the tall-grass prairie, not the Big Bluestem; the short-grass prairie, not the prairie-dog or blackfoot-ferret.
if we keep the old-growth forest intact in the LESS than one-percent that remains, we *might* keep the enormous complexity of the web it has created – which sustains it.
a condor that cannot fly, or cannot feed, or has nowhere to nest, is doomed to be a zoo-display.
an environment can never be displayed in a zoo; it exists life-size, or not at all.
i am praying the damage to the Great Barrier Reef is minimal; coral reefs are already under terrific strain, worldwide.
Prince Edward Sound still has not recovered from the Exxon-Valdez spill; and Exxon, ** DESPITE ** record setting profits several years running, has yet to pay a bloody *%$#@! dime in compensation.
instead they have spent millions on appeal, and appeal, and variance, and delay, and appeal…
the people whose livelihoods and whose home was destroyed are now aging, dying, and many near bankrupt; the tourist cabins, crabbing and fishing, etc, have never recovered; the beaches still seep oil, or secrete it under the gravels in the sand.
Exxon is a curse in my mouth; they have no ethics, no concern, and no worries; as a *corporation* they have the same rights as an individual, in the USA-legal system.
the complexities of living landscapes and seascapes are not the concerns of corporations; corporations care about profit margins and making investors happy with dividends and stock-splits.
they are the antithesis of living creatures within a biome; they regard no other good but their own interests, and cheerfully pump sewage into their own waterways, if it saves them a dime in the near-future.
they are infinitely greedy and endlessly destructive.
perhaps a financial-industry form of AIDS will bring their numbers down; if not, i am afraid we and the natural world alike are doomed. corporations recognize no limits whatever; not national borders, not any one government. they are widely diversified and virtually immune to boycott. EXXON grows the peanuts they serve in bars across the USA; Proctor + Gamble sells coffee at a loss to shove competitors off the cleaning-products shelves.
corporations are cutthroat, massive, global juggernauts.
Godzilla, where are U when we need U?
— terry
terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
Tho’, must note that they surely didn’t manipulate themselves – at least not in that amount the humans do now.