19 JulEpisode 68 | Is Dominance Really A Thing? Cesar Millan, Libertarianism + A Dog Named Pizza
Before she became a dog trainer, Annie assumed that understanding dogs' supposed obsession with dominance was an important part of being a good trainer. She pushed her 18-pound Yorkiepoo into alpha rolls so he'd know she was boss. She yelled in his face, and made sure he never entered through a doorway before her, because Cesar Millan said that that would make the dog think he was the one in charge.
The whole idea that dog behavior, and the way dogs learn, had anything to do with science simply did not compute; the notion of them existing in a kind of Lord-Of-The-Flies quest for supreme power seemed plausible and not something worth reconsidering. After graduating dog training school, her thoughts on "dominance" shifted 180 degrees. Now, ten years spent working as a professional trainer, they've shifted yet again...
In this episode, Annie reads from Raymond and Lorna Coppinger's book Dogs on Commensalism, Mutualism, Parasitism and Amensalism.
Bonus Q+A: Pizza the mini goldendoodle (@the_pizza_dood) is obsessed with stealing collapsible water bowls at the park. Annie suggests a three pronged approach to curing him of the habit of destroying silicone water bowls that belong to other dogs.
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Transcript:
Annie:
Hello, human friends, and dog listeners, woof to you. I wanted to talk today about dominance. So in the three decades of life that I lived before becoming a dog trainer, I am pretty sure that I thought the word dominant was as much a part of dog training as boiling water was to cooking. It was just an essential part of the whole thing that was dog training. Dog training at that time being something that I think I thought of as, you know, something that happens when you sign up for a class or you hire a professional, and that dog training wasn't happening really outside of those times.
It's hard for me to explain because the idea seems so weird to me now, but I thought of dog training like — dentistry happens at the dentist office, or if you're a dentist. Dentistry just isn't happening. Anyway, now I think about training and learning differently, but you know what, maybe if you're a dentist listening to this, you would disagree with my classification of dentistry being location and profession specific.
Anyway, my point is the idea of dominance and dog training were two things that couldn't be unlinked. I took for granted that a big part of dog training is about people putting dogs in their place and making sure they understood that we are the boss. And I'm not sure I really thought about it that much, but this seemed somehow an undeniable fact about dog training. Actually sort of funny/embarrassing story about my pre-dog training life. I was working as a reporter in like 2007. I pitched a story to my editor at the Style of the New York Times, which I wrote for pretty regularly.
I pitched a story on people becoming dog trainers. I have done a few stories in my career on people diving into their plan B jobs or into their dream jobs. Those kinds of stories always interested me. And I'd always loved dogs. I had been told by this one dog trainer, when I was growing up that maybe I could become a dog trainer one day, and that sort of stuck with me, and every now and then I would Google, like, how do you become a dog trainer? But I would always find these programs that seemed a little bit like, just like, “Hey, let's take your money.” Like, “wouldn't you like to work for yourself and work outside and work for dogs. You could become a dog trainer.” And it wasn't totally clear to me what these programs were offering.
It felt like they were offering some kind of machine I could step into. You go into this side of the machine, a normal person, and you come out the other side as a dog trainer with a treat pouch and a clipboard and solving people's problems in their homes. And I really wasn't aware that there were different approaches to dog training. I don't think science-based dog training was even a term I'd ever heard. It all just felt like a kind of opaque world that perhaps other people were getting more interested in because of The Dog Whisperer, AKA Cesar Millan, who had a show called The Dog Whisperer, which was on at that time. And he was super appealing. He had kind of an underdog quality about him and just seemed like a magician. It felt like it would be impossible for someone to not love this person and be in awe of his talents.
I remember I had a boyfriend at the time, and we had a dog and we watched a couple episodes of The Dog Whisperer. And he just talked to everybody about what an amazing person, this guy, Cesar Millan was. He was just incredible. And everybody around, whether or not they'd even seen the show, everybody was kind of in agreement. So I just assumed everybody was right. And I'm not even talking about conversations I had with dog owners or dog trainers. Cesar Millan, at least at that time, was just like a celebrity who was, we all just agreed as a society that he was incredible and lovable and wonderful.
That's how I kind of remember thinking about him. Like we all just agreedd he was wonderful. Like, I don't know who else in our society could we all agree on, I don't know, like Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner. It would have been shocking to me at that time if anyone had said anything about him, that wasn't just glowing. And Cesar Millan was all about dominance and showing the dog that you are the alpha, and how it's our fault that dogs think that they dominate us.
Anyway, here's a clip I found from around that time. He’s speaking to Marlo Thomas. And what I think is interesting is how Marlo Thomas is kind of like, I don't know, just listen to her, like, “Oh, aha, right?” Like she's just agreeing with him left and right. Even though to me, like what he's saying seems like any reasonable person would clearly understand that it makes no sense, but he has the ability to turn people into sycophants.
[Audio clip begins]
Marlo Thomas:
This is from Vanessa. “Hi Cesar. I have a wonderful four year old Cavalier King Charles spaniel who’s very nice and obedient, but just isn't much of a cuddler. I know he's not mad or unhappy, but I wish he were cozier. That's my favorite part of having a dog. Can I train him to be more affectionate or is this just his nature?”
Cesar Millan:
When a dog is, uh, behave in a more dominant state, he controls.
Marlo Thomas:
Right.
Cesar Millan:
They're not really good cuddlers.
Marlo Thomas:
I see.
Cesar Millan:
You know, because a leader likes to be by himself.
Marlo Thomas:
Mm-hmm.
Cesar Millan:
You know? So one of the things that we don't know about her is how does she influence her dog to be in control of the relationship? You know, so a lot of times people that have a dog that they make them the dominant one, those dogs don't like to cuddle.
Marlo Thomas:
Oh.
Cesar Millan:
It’s when you make them, uh, go into a follower state, they want to be with the pack. Also, ignoring him can make him look for you more often. The more you look for them, the more they walk away from you!
Marlo Thomas:
Oh. The one who's not cozy
Cesar Millan:
The one who’s not cozy. We don't know the strategy that he has, that she has. Right? But one of the things that work for dogs, or for people who want their dogs to cuddle with them, is the more you ignore them, the more they gravitate to you.
[End of clip]
Annie Grossman:
Now, there were definitely lots of people at that time who were trying to tell the general public, “Hey, this guy, not only doesn't know what he's talking about, but he's really doing a lot of damage to a lot of dogs and a lot of dog owners out there.” But their voices just were not super loud, at least outside of the world of real dog trainers.
And I was sort of interested in the idea of dog training and here people were actually talking about a dog trainer as if he was a celebrity. So I was kind of interested in him, but not like in any kind of scholarly way. He was just definitely on my radar at that time, even though I wasn't really thinking about becoming a dog trainer seriously at that point, and had not done really very much dog training with any of my dogs at the time.
Cesar Millan, it seemed to me, really definitely knew what he was doing, and it was no surprise to me that people wanted to emulate him, but I was sort of aware it wasn't a regulated field. And anyway, when I was doing this article, I ended up talking to Parveen Farhoody, who I have since taken classes under. I did one of her week-long chicken training programs in 2016, which I just got so much out of. Anyway, she is a Titan in the field if you ask me, and at that point she was I believe the head of the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers. So I called her up and asked her–well, I asked her a lot about a lot of things, but I was specifically asking her about Bark Busters.
And after we talked on the phone, I guess emailed her, God, this was 13 years ago. This whole conversation is archived in my email inbox. And it's like, I was a very different version of myself when I was writing these emails to her. So this is what I wrote to her:
Hey, Parveen thank you so much for your time, just to quadruple confirm. This is basically what we're saying about Bark Busters in the article, from what you know about them. Does this seem accurate?
I am pausing the reading of the letter just to explain that one of the things the article talked about was this company Bark Busters. Bark Busters, by the way, is a chain. It's a franchise, dog training franchise, I believe. And, I should say I don't know very much about what kind of training they're doing these days or how the company has or hasn't evolved. So, just wanted to be clear about that. Again, I'm reading a 13 year old email here. Okay. Back to reading the 2007 email. So anyway, I was basically fact-checking in the article at this point, and this is what I wanted her to confirm was correct. All right. This is me reading the email again.
Would you say that it is true: Some trainers believe in behavior modification theories that relate to broader theories about the similarities in the ways humans and many other animals learn. The Bark Buster's model is pared down with a method based on understanding canine psyche and communicating with a dog as a pack leader would. It doesn't involve the human-oriented behavior modification methods favored by many trainers.
And by the way, now I can say that when I wrote, “human oriented behavior modification methods favored by many trainers,” I think I had no idea what that meant. But I think I kind of thought like Cesar Millan is showing how dogs are dogs and people are people and we need to put them in their place and make them understand. And then there is this other group of people who actually think dogs learn and experience things in a way that is similar to how humans do, and that there are parts of that kind of world that might influence training. But I think that that latter group seemed a little like, I don't know, just not something to be taken seriously, I guess?
Like again, now it's crazy to me that I didn't realize how much science there is in all of this, and the fact that there is research happening about how animals learn that is taken very seriously. I didn't know that the science of behavior was a thing. So this is what Parveen wrote back to me the day after Christmas, 2007:
Let me illustrate my point this way. What you're asking is similar to asking whether the statement, “Some people think the earth is round, but others take the view that it is flat,” is accurate. The statement you have written implies that there are two reasonable, legitimate belief systems in dog training, and that they hold the same weight. I would not agree that the statement is accurate because you are putting the legitimate field of behavior science on the same level as myth, misinformation, and marketing. Dog training is a science based in over a hundred years of scientific method, study and peer review. Bark Busters is a business model based on a very limited understanding of dog behavior and an interest in making money.
I don't know the angle of your article, but if, for example, you were advertising for Bark Busters, then you might want to say that they offer a legitimate approach to dog training. However, I or any other person actually educated in behavior, behavior modification, training, and animal learning, would tell you that dog training in the 21st century is considered part of the field of behavior science and that the accepted education expected from anyone engaging in the profession of dog training today is an education in that science. Anything else calling itself dog training is nothing more than personal opinion.
The idea that dogs behave just like wolves and live in the same social systems is not true. Continuous repetition of this myth will not make it true. Again. In dog ethology, there is no “pack leader.” There is no “psyche” in dog behavior. That term is specific to humans. There is no learning theory based in a human model. The laws of learning are universal to all species. This type of psychobabble espoused by some “dog trainers” sounds silly and confusing to me and to others trained in the field. The reality is that there are many people who have decided they are “dog trainers.”
At this moment to be a dog trainer takes no education, no certification and no license. That is a problem. It leads to people taking advantage on many levels of an unsuspecting public that just wants help. As the profession matures, we hope to help the public understand that there is a tremendous difference between those who can help them train their dogs because they are educated in many areas of dog training and learning, and those who think that dogs are simple and that you don't need to know anything specific except some old school myths.
The independent standardized exams offered by the Certification Council for Professional Dog training CCPDT are major steps towards this understanding. Thank you for taking the time to make sure that you have accurately presented my view. I appreciate the trouble you are going through to be sure it is clear. I know it may seem long winded at times, but this is a very complicated and delicate issue for people, and I hope to help you and your readers see the big picture.
Thanks again, and best of luck with the article,
Parveen Farhoody
Oh, I wish I had just published that email! She basically bitch slapped me in a way that I didn't even understand. I literally forwarded the whole correspondence to my editor and was like, “This sounds like a whole lot of insider baseball.” Anyway, the resulting article that was published I now am incredibly embarrassed about, I can't believe.
I mean, it just goes to show how you think about — I mean, here's this prestigious source, The New York Times, and yet they let me write this thing that is so ridiculous. And I guess in my defense, I just reread this old article and I feel like it must've been edited pretty heavily because some of this just feels like not quite my style, but still, I put the content in this article. I mean, at best, I guess the gist of the article is like more people are becoming dog trainers or wanting to become dog trainers. And somehow I managed to make 2000 words out of that. I guess I will link to this in the show notes, even though it's awful.
Anyway at the end, the very last bit here, I talk about some different people becoming dog trainers and how they did it. One guy goes to the Tom Rose school for professional dog trainers. One person does a bunch of apprenticeships. “But then at the end, Doug Roundtree of Louisville, Kentucky chose a much faster route. Two years ago, Mr. Roundtree, then an information technology manager, bought into Bark Busters, an international franchise with 245 trainers nationwide. The company gave him three weeks of intensive training, about 40 hours of homework, suggested he give a few free lessons, and then allowed him to open shop.”
I just pause to say, I do in the article to my credit, talk about how it isn't a regulated field. And that that could be problematic because basically anybody could be calling themselves a dog trainer. Okay. Now I'm reading again. “Bark Busters boasts trainers who have given up careers as fortune 500 executives, human genome scientists, and stockbrokers to join their ranks, but their method doesn't involve the animal behavior modification theories favored by many trainers. Instead it is based on understanding what they call the “canine psyche” and communicating with a dog as a pack leader would.
Sadly, Bark Busters got a lot more play in this article than Parveen did. I mean, I really just missed the story. It ends with a kicker about a guy I interviewed earlier in the story who after thinking about becoming a dog trainer instead decides to become a tire salesman. So, sorry, I got a little off track there. What I was starting to talk about was how there were just certain concepts I took for granted before I became so deeply interested in dog training. And one of those was this notion of dominance.
And then I would say, post-going to Karen Pryor Academy-me — I mean, before that, like when I wrote that article 2007, I did do things with my dog in the name of dominance and thinking that I needed to show him that I was the alpha. I would do alpha rolls with him where I pushed him down on his side and held him down by his neck and like growled in his face. My little like 18 pound Yorkie poo.
I remember being told that I should give him guilt trips [laughs]. That it was a good way to make him know I was disappointed in him, that I was the boss. I remember learning from he Dog Whisperer that it was important to not let him go through any doorway in front me, that he would think he was the pack leader if he could go out in front of me. And I needed him to know that I was the pack leader. Although, this suggests that there are like doorways in the wild that the wolves are vying for access to. I don't know.
And I certainly assumed that dogs who growled or pulled or whatever had the problems they had because they thought they were dominant or were trying to dominate us or their dogs. But then I became one of these career switching people who I had written that about a few years prior, and I actually learned about the science of behavior. I learned to think about dog training in a completely new way, and in a way that made so much more sense. I graduated from the Karen Pryor Academy in 2010. And if you had hit me up with the question, you know, “Do you believe in dominance theory for dog training?” at around that point, I probably would have said no, dominance is not a thing.
The studies that were done that led to the modern ideas of dominance — or one study in particular, the one where the term alpha dog was coined — they were studying wolves who had been captured and were trying to survive in groups in captivity. Groups that were not necessarily familial. And it seems like a bad idea to make sweeping judgments about an entire species based on what they're doing when they're stressed out and living in captivity with folks they don't know.
Since then, wolves have been studied much more extensively in their natural habitats. And we think that they tend to live in kind of familial groups where there might be some kind of hierarchy, the same way there's a hierarchy in a family. But the top guy’s method of controlling the others is not aggression and violence, because those are both very calorically expensive and potentially unsafe activities to engage in.
So you're more likely to find these probably older leaders of these wolf families that are probably training their families using the same tools we use when we're trying to train dogs. Management, timing, rewards, good associations, encouraging behaviors that they like, not allowing a lot of opportunity for behaviors they don't like to occur. And reinforcing behaviors or punishing behaviors with appropriate punishers and reinforcers with really good timing. These are my guesses. I really don't know that much about wolf behavior.
Most dog trainers, however, will also point out that dogs are not wolves; that although, of course, they are the same species, they're separated by tens of thousands of years of evolution. There's strong arguments that dogs evolved to get along with us, and that studying wolves and their behavior is probably not the best way to learn about dogs.
But I think it's so interesting that these studies were done on wolves who had no choice about who they were with or their environment. And it's interesting that that fact didn't immediately appear to the researchers as something that could lead to what might not be behavior that you would see in the wild.
I mean, you can imagine that any animal plopped down with a group of strangers in a situation they didn't choose, in what might be a completely new environment with new challenges, and, combine that with perhaps the recent stress of being captured, it would be like trying to make generalizations about human group dynamics solely based on watching episodes of Survivor.
Animals behave differently when they have more choices available. And the lot of the behaviors that people describe as dogs being dominant, or trying to dominate each other, or us, I now think of as behaviors that stem in fear, and can be usually addressed by changing associations and giving dogs choice.
Now, after spending the last 10 years as a professional dog trainer, I don't think I would still say dominance isn't a thing. I still don't think Cesar Millan sounds like he makes very much sense when he talks about dominance. But I do think dominance exists. At least as a kind of broad term that we use to describe certain behaviors we can observe, because of course we can only guess how dogs are feeling.
Those wolves who were being studied, it's not like their behavior doesn't count as real behavior. They really were trying to vie for resources, or maybe trying to make alliances, or keep their territory. It's easy to see all kinds of human equivalence here in our behavior, isn't it? And I can believe that that resulted in one individual or groups of individuals trying to exert power over the other group, not unlike something you might see on an episode of Survivor. Or in the middle East. Or even like in a grade school, you know. Any situation where individuals have been thrown together where they haven't made the choice to be there.
I think there's a natural tendency, probably in all animals, or many species of animals at the least, to try to get power in certain situations. Look at the war-torn world we live in. But I think that could also apply to kindergarteners. I remember in like first or second grade, there was a kid who was a bit of a bully, and my mom telling me, you know, you have to learn to deal with her because there's going to be lots of versions of her in your life, down the road.
What's funny is now I think back about that, and I think about wolves in captivity, and I see a similarity, which is that neither I, as a little kid, nor those captured wolves, exerted any control over the situation. I didn't have a choice about whether I was going to go to school every day to see this mean kid. And the wolves were also by definition, trapped. Now as an adult, if I encounter someone who maybe has what could be called a dominant personality, or a bullying personality, I can choose to not interact with that person. I'm not forced to go sit next to that person at lunch every day, the way I was before.
There's actually a game we play with puppies called, or not really a game. We call it the bully test. I think that term was coined by a doctor, Ian Dunbar, who started the Association for Professional Dog Trainers. But the bully test is if two dogs are playing, and you are worried that one of them is maybe being bullied, pull the potentially bullying dog away and see what — let's call it the omega dog,” [laughs] if the dominant one is the alpha dog — see what that other dog does. If the other dog sticks around, or it goes back up to the supposed bullying dog, or does anything other than, you know, run to his human's lap or hide in the corner, you know that that dog is into it. And that the dog that seemed dominant is not being perceived as a bully. At least in that moment, at that time, by that dog.
You give the other dog a choice about whether or not they want to be around the so-called dominant dog. You know, I don't know a whole lot about human group dynamics, but having worked with lots of dogs both individually or with their humans or with groups of dogs, I think that dogs are happiest when they have some choice about where they're spending their time and with whom they're spending their time.
So, while I believe dominance may exist, there are a lot of reasons why I don't think it needs to be a focus of dog training or a focus of anyone's life with their dogs, because are we putting dogs in our worlds? Are we forcing them into our lives? Well, yeah, in most cases. But we can arrange their lives, ideally, so that we are giving them what they need so that if they had a choice, they would continue to hang out with us.
It was only really after I started seeing the world through this lens of behavioral science that a lot of very libertarian ideas started to appeal to me. A few years ago, I was listening a lot to an excellent podcast called “School Sucks.” And one of the running themes in that podcast is about how school forces us into these unnatural situations, social situations. Also unnatural learning situations.
The modern schooling system wasn't really designed for the happiness and wellbeing and intelligent education of the children. Wasn't designed to help them learn how to feel good in the world or make choices that are right for them. It's an educational system that was designed to produce good little workers who will show up on time and be good little citizens, who believe their government is the best government.
With our dogs, I think that part of the way that we can create worlds that they want to be in is by using positive reinforcement to encourage behaviors. We like we can give dogs control over their environment in this way. Oh, if I behave in X way, I get something really great from the human — be that food or love or a walk or a great game of tug, whatever it is. But so much of good dog training is about helping dogs develop behaviors that are going to net things that they want. As opposed to forcing them to be in situations and then having an “or else” clause all over the place, which puts us into the negative reinforcement quadrant of operant conditioning, which is what a lot of dog trainers are still doing.
That's where they're operating. If you bark, then you get shocked. If you pull on the leash, then you are going to get choked until you stop pulling on the leash. And, perhaps not coincidentally, it's the trainers who are using those methods, I think, who are probably more likely to tell their clients that they need to dominate their dogs.
And, you know, another problem I always think about with dominance as a word, the way people throw it around. First of all, it suggests that there's some sort of, like, end peak result, that eventually a dog has dominated his people or dominated another dog, and that we need to keep that from happening. You know, what does that look like? What does domination look like? I don't understand how you could, you know, measure it on a scale or take its temperature or figure out its length.
I mean, does a dog dominate the other being if, if the dog kills the other dog or the person or whatever, is that domination? On some level, I think that you can spot what could be called dominance, in most relationships, of any kind, do have perhaps one dominant side. There's often one person who's more in control because they control the money or they control the space.
Or, between two dogs — you know, I have a small Yorkie poo. In some situations, I think probably some people would call his behavior dominant. If there's a ball around and a body of water, he is going to get that ball and he is going to own that ball. And will let you know about it if a dog he’s never met comes into our home, I can note the way he behaves there. But you know what he is going to be a different dog when we're outside or when we're at someone else's place. Even if there's a ball around but there isn't a body of water. He then doesn't care so much about the ball.
So there's a kind of fluid bossiness, I guess, fluid way in which, in some situations it seems like he's trying to exert control or he has control. And you can find that in pretty much any relationship. I remember as a kid actually seeing my third grade teacher at the supermarket and feeling like, Oh, you know what, she can't tell me what to do here. And it's kind of like that, you know, in the classroom, she was dominant. In the supermarket, she wasn't.
Another thing that I think tends to get neglected when people are quick to assume that dominance is an important thing to understand when trying to understand dog behavior, is that dogs play. And play is kind of like rehearsing possible things that could happen in life. Certainly you see this with kids playing house, and it's a way to problem solve, to experiment with different kinds of behaviors and feelings and actions.
And with dogs, sometimes play can look like fighting. Same thing with kids. Think about tag or football. So much of play is like an organized form of what otherwise could really look like violence. And I mean, sometimes it is violence, like boxing, wrestling. I feel uncomfortable watching those kinds of sports because to me it no longer seems like make-believe, if people might actually be getting hurt.
Anyway, I suppose the takeaway on this point is that it is completely normal for dogs to engage in vocalizations, to chase each other, to play tug with each other, or with you. In a lot of play situations it's normal for one dog to want to be on top. Then it's normal for another dog to want to be on top. And one of the reasons why, at School for the Dogs, we feel like it's so important for dogs to be able to have opportunities for safe play with one another — not just puppies, but dogs of all ages — is because they need outlets to be able to work out this kind of thing.
This kind of play is completely healthy. And dog owners can learn what good play looks like so that they can encourage it when it's happening and stop it when it's not. Is one dog, maybe trying to dominate another dog in that situation? Sure. You might say that, but only in the context of that game. Outside of that game, things might be different. There might be some other hierarchy. And usually in good play, there's kind of a taking turns of who might be what you call dominant. It's like, I'm it. No, I'm it. You, okay. Now you chase me. I want to be on top. No, I want to be on top. That's kind of what good dog dog play might look like.
And every relationship is its own thing, just like you might behave differently around different people. You know, my dog has two good two good dog friends. I mean, he probably has more than that, but two of his main dog friends are Ginger who belongs to our trainer, Anna Ostroff, and Gilby who belongs to Alex who also works for us. And both Ginger and Gilby have spent a lot of time in my apartment with Amos. They all got on really well.
Ginger and Gilby however, when they're with each other and Amos isn't around, they're a little different with each other than they are around him. I think they're a little looser, maybe a little bit more goofy. I think that they enjoy coming over to my apartment, and I think they both really like Amos. Gilby will like paw at Amos in a kind of sweet way, and Ginger likes to kiss him. But you know what? Ginger stays a little bit lower to the ground when Amos's around. And Gilby seems very aware, always, of where Amos is in the room. I think he gives them information with very subtle body language that this is his place and this is his stuff. And these are his people.
And that doesn't mean he's guarding his food bowl or not letting anyone near his toys, but you know, I've known him for a long time now, and I can kind of read in these little subtle ways when he's sort of saying, “Yo, this is my place.” And being the well socialized and observant dogs they are — socially savvy dogs that they are, Gilbey and Ginger — Amos doesn't have to give this information in a very harsh way. He can keep it low, key and subtle.
But I don't let Amos hangout with puppies, because puppies don't pick up on his “Hey, leave my stuff alone” cues. They just don't have all of that social learning under their belt that an older and wiser dog like Ginger or Gilby has. And in those cases, if a puppy gets into his space and isn't heeding his frankly polite warnings, Amos will exhibit behaviors that someone might call dominant or alpha.
But I see my role as his human — I think my roll is to help control his world so that I'm not putting my 15 year old dog in situations like that. And if I am in a situation with any kind of thing, be it a dog or whatever else that I think might make them uncomfortable, I'm going to try and minimize that exposure and create as much of a good association as I can using tools available. That might mean, you know, physically keeping him apart from something else by having them tethered or in a bag. Trying to create good associations using food rewards, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, like I said, every relationship has some kind of hierarchy, and one reason why I don't worry too much about whether or not my dog is trying to dominate me is because I'm pretty sure I'm the dominant one. And I also think he's actually okay with that. Why am I the dominant one? Cause I'm the one who's controlling where he lives, what he eats, where he sleeps, how he spends his time, where he spends his time, with whom he’s spending his time. I'm the one in control.
But I think I am creating situations where he's benefiting from my control. And wouldn't it be nice if we were all in relationships with dominant people or institutions whose interest was us feeling good? That wouldn't be so bad. Like in a workplace situation, you want to be making choices that will be positively reinforced and not doing things because you're worried something bad will happen if you don't — negative reinforcement. It would be nice if in our relationship with the government, which generally has power over the individual, that if we were doing things because they were going to result in good things for us and not, you know, paying taxes because we're going to go to jail if we don't.
There are also people who will argue that dogs aren't dominating us or trying to, and that we're not dominating them. That we're equal, that we are controlling each other and benefiting from each other. I could also imagine the argument that we are the real wusses in the relationship, that dogs are dominating us all the time because we are the ones paying for them, providing them with everything they need, and also picking up after them when they poop.
I wanted to end the episode with just a passage from a book by the ecologists Ray and Lorna Coppinger The book is called Dogs. I love that title, the whole title, just Dogs. They do a great job here of talking about these different kinds of structures of our relationships. This is a part that's in the introduction, about halfway through.
Populations of animals can be studied in different ways by different “ists.” When ecologists speak about how people and dogs relate, they use a different vocabulary than when economists, say, explore economic questions of how they relate. People tend to assume that the relationship between people and dogs is good, of mutual benefit to both species. People supposedly gain value from owning a dog, or perhaps the dog does valuable work for them, and they reward it by vaccinating it against disease, protecting it from harm and providing food and reproductive opportunities.
But ecologically, the idea of mutual benefit ceases to be an assumed truth and raises the questions is the symbiotic relationship between humans and dogs really mutualism? What else could it be? The ecologists’ defines four basic symbiotic relationships. Mutualism is only one quarter of the story.
Commensalism is a symbiotic relationship that is good for one species, but does nothing for the other. There are millions of dogs around the world, scavenging the dumps of villages. They get a food benefit from living close to people while the people get little or no benefit from the dogs. Some people would contend that the scavenger benefits the village by cleaning up the refuse. In that case, rats and raccoons should be given similar credit. There are so many dogs making a commensal living around civilized people that we think villages may well have been the original inspiration for wolves to become dogs.
Mutualism is the relationship assumed to exist now between dogs and people. The first thing people point to to support this is that dogs pull sleds, herd sheep, or guard houses. With our varied experiences working with dogs, we wouldn't deny this, but others would say that it is cruel to have a dog pull a sled implying that it is not to the dog's benefit. Certainly, and by definition, if there is a mutual benefit it has to benefit both parties, not just one. A major portion of this book is devoted to dogs that work with people. And we will demonstrate why some of this work is mutual and some is not.
Parasitism defines a relationship between two species living together where one organism obtains a benefit at the expense of the other. It may be unpopular, but we are going to make the case that the domestic house dog may have evolved into a parasite. It costs more than it gives back. Further, we postulate another relationship, a subcategory of parasitism called dulosis. Dulosis is enslavement, where one species captures workers from another species. We are resigned to the fact that we will probably lose this argument, but we bet we lose it because people just don't agree with us, and not because someone can provide data to the contrary.
Amensalism – There is another way we might lose the parasite argument. The fourth form of symbiosis is amensalism, a living together in which one species hurts another often unknowingly and without benefit to itself. If we can show that pet dogs are in a peculiar position where they are genetically trapped in small inbreeding populations, called pure breeds, that will eventually destroy them, it should be clear that it is bad for the dog to be in this relationship and not particularly beneficial for the human.
The presence of parasitism or amensalism should not be taken as grounds for the elimination of dogs in our lives. Rather, the facts should be used as starting points for change and moving toward real mutualism.”
Excellent book, the famous ecologist who wrote it with his wife, Lorna Raymond Coppinger, died a few years ago. He was a professor at Hampshire college. And shortly before he died, though, he released two other books. One called What is a Dog, another one called How Dogs Work. I also highly recommend both of those. They cover some similar areas as Dogs, which is a more of a classic, but the newer books are a little bit easier to read.
Anyway. I hope you've enjoyed some of my thoughts on dominance. I would love to know yours. Have your thoughts on dominance evolved or changed as you've gotten to know your dogs or think about dog training? Let me know. I would love to hear from you at annie@schoolforthedogs.com.
I wanted to close out today with an answer to a question a client just wrote in to me. This comes from Lee, who is the owner of a adorable doodle named Pizza. Lee wrote:
“We have a group of dogs that we play with off-leash at the park and Pizza does a great job playing with them, except for one thing. He steals their bowls and plays Keep-away. I should mention it is usually water bowls, silicone or plastic only. If someone brings a more permanent bowl we have at home, he doesn't touch it, but sometimes this extends to something else he is excited by that's been left on the ground.
“We get the sense he knows he has taken something he shouldn't, but the process of getting it back from him has become a game of keep away for him. And it's resulted in him destroying a number of water bowls and us having to replace them. All that to say, we are trying to figure out a new behavior or behaviors we can teach him to at least be able to get it back from him if he takes it, and even better, help him to stop taking these items and running.”
Annie:
So without knowing all the details, I have three quick tips for you, Lee. First, I would practice Drop it. Practice Drop it at home, fefore you start upping the difficulty and doing it outside. And in moments of great exhilaration, like at the dog park, it's such a super easy thing to teach. You're going to say the word, “Drop it.” Then you are going to drop some treats, and eventually Pizza is going to learn to open up his mouth in order to get those treats, whenever you say drop it, and is going to end up dropping whatever it is.
I have a podcast episode and a blog post all about teaching Drop it and Come using classical conditioning. And I will link to it in the show notes. I would practice Drop it all day, every day. It's not hard to practice and it can be something that is hugely beneficial. You don't just have to practice with treats. You can practice giving him toys when you say Drop it too. I'll talk more about that in a second.
But my second piece of advice is that you get one of those silicone water bowls or food bowls and put them in around the house and make them super boring. I mean, you can use them for food. Sure. But you want him to be like, “Oh, these things are around all the time.” Not just like, “This is this exciting thing that I see when we're at the dog park and everybody seems very excited when I take it.” I don't know whether or not he thinks he's doing something that he shouldn't, but I am guessing that the behavior of running around with another dog's water bowl has been reinforced in some way, whether that's because it's just really fun to do it, or he enjoys the attention that he gets from everyone around him when it happens, even if it's a, what might be called negative attention.
We actually sell collapsible slow food bowls in our online shop storeforthedogs.com. But I also want you to head over to Store for the Dogs because we have just added all or I think almost all of the products made by the company West Paw, which is a Montana based company that makes these really great rubber chew toys for dogs. They use this special rubber called zogo flex that's like extra squishy, and it's filled with air. Dogs love the toys that are made with this stuff. They float, they're super sturdy, and they come with a guarantee. If your dog ever does destroy it, you can return it to West Paw and they'll replace it.
So I'm a huge fan of the Zogoflex toys, and I think that getting a toy like this, or really toys. You know, I want you to be offering him toys that are even more fun than those darn silicone collapsible water bowls and the Zogoflex toys are similar enough that I think he's going to be into them, but also different enough that I think he'll be able to differentiate which toys are toys and which are bowls, especially if you make it so that these rubber toys, the Zogoflex toys only come out when you are at the park, you can like designate a special park toy.
There's actually one toy in particular that they made called the Zisc flying disc. The Zisc flying disc that West Paw makes that I think would be particularly good because it is very much like a water bowl in its size and shape. But I think Pizza is going to enjoy chewing and tugging with this thing more than he is with a regular water bowl.
And this toy is something that I would do get a few of so that you can, you know, play tug with him and then say Drop it. But rather than dropping treats, some of the time, you going to present another Zisc or maybe even two discs so you can practice Drop it by doing a kind of trade. “Hey, when I say Drop it, if you let go of this one Zisc over here, you're going to get twos Ziscs over here from my other hand.” So hope that helps. Keep me posted about how Pizza does practicing his Drop its and playing with his new toys.
Lastly, just wanted to let you know that we have just published our self-paced online courses. You can find them at schoolforthedogs.com/courses. We've worked really hard on these digital programs. The response has been really overwhelming and wonderful, and it's just been really exciting to work with the dog owners all around the world who are starting to do our courses. We have a lot of other great stuff to come in the digital realm that we are working on putting out. Can't wait to share all that with you guys too.
Please make sure to subscribe to the podcast, follow us on Instagram, so that you can be in the know as we continue to try to, I don't know, what are we doing here? [Laughs] To try and make the world a better place for dogs and the humans who love them.
Links:
Toys and products –
The Zisc Flying Disc by West Paw
Learn more about Parvene Farhoody
Books by Raymond Coppinger –
What Is A Dog (with Lorna Coppinger)
How Dogs Work (with Mark Feinstein)
The (now embarrassing) 2007 article Annie wrote in The NY Times about people wanting to become dog trainers
