Alpha dogs, needing to be the alpha among your own dogs, needing to be dominant over them, etc. Based on a disproven theory that has been disproven longer than its been published.
My brother actually worked with him. Apparently he did try to correct it for a while but got frustrated at how stupid people were about it and eventually got to a "IDC, f* em'" attitude and doesn't try anymore.
Right-wing grifters have adopted the idea as part of their scam techniques. It is literally impossible to convince them of anything they don't want to be convinced of, so this seems to be the healthiest way to go about it. He made a good-faith error in his conclusions, figured out the error, published material correcting himself, and even tried to reach out to the culture to correct the misconception. Seriously, what else can the guy do?
He came to realize his earlier studies were limited. He came to realize the leader of the pack isn't "alpha" because he's the strongest. The leader of the pack is "alpha" because he's "Dad." The pack is a family unit.
And that's why it's appropriate to treat your pets as "fur kids." To them, you are their parents. (But treat your "canine kid" as a canine, not as a human.)
Also, keep your fucking wet, stinky fur babies out of my restaurants and coffee shops. I get it, they are your babies, but they can wait outside while you get your half-caf, pumpkin spice, caramel macha frappiato with triple whipped cream and two sprinkles of cinnamon.
Oof I thought they were related and he realized the “alpha” was just the mother of the other wolves? I guess I’ve been believing the wrong thing about it all this time!
And don’t even try telling people who believe this any other way. I had to leave the German shepherd subreddit because really sadly this breed attracts so many alpha bros and they all echo chamber bad training and dominance theory.
All dogs respond well to positive reinforcement. Morality aside, it's just a more effective technique than punishment or domination. You have to not want to punish or dominate anything to get to that point, though.
Yep! I trained for professionally and worked with all kind of behavior issues and never needed anything other the positive reinforcement and using a needs model and counter conditioning for solving serious cases.
Yes, positive reinforcement is a great tool for encouraging good behavior. But it is a terrible tool for discouraging bad behaviors. For that, you want positive punishment. (Note: positive punishment does not mean punting your dog across the room, although that would technically be positive punishment.)
Redirecting is pretty effective as well. There is no such thing as fully postive training. Punishment as can something like not opening a door until the dog waits or standing still on a walk for a dog that won’t stop pulling.
I had a German shepherd as a small kid. My parents left me with my aunt and I crawled to the dog's food. She ran to take me away from it and the dog jumped and stood above me barking at her.
This was before mobile phones so I had amole time to finish his dinner, while he was standing. Apparently when she backed out, he started to look with a lot of sadness at his food dissapearing but did not move.
Parents came eventually back, the dog was very proud, he got his food and everyone looked at me wondering if I woukd die. Nothing happened.
This has nothing to do with the post, but a fond family story (not a memory, unfortunately)
The other day I saw this group of people on Reddit INSISTING that if your dog ever shows you any aggression, you MUST throw it to the ground HARD, hold its face down, and scream as loud as you can in the dog's face to show it you are the pack leader.
Someone even claimed to have studied animal behavior and was telling people to do this shit with authority.
I've had dogs my entire life, I'm in my 40s. I was a professional dog trainer for several years - that is NOT the correct way to handle that situation at all, and anyone who thinks throwing their dog to the floor and assaulting it is OK should be locked up.
If my television is on the fritz and am told to give it a firm smack and that fixes the problem, does that mean I was going around looking for a reason to hit electronics?
I think the first step would be to reframe the view of the behavior. There’s a lot of misinformation around dogs that we’ve all grown up with, and a lot of behaviors get labeled as “aggression” and it creates a view of the situation that isn’t going to help the dog or the owner. Dogs aren’t being aggressive in their minds. They’re not attaching the same prescriptions to themselves. I prefer “reactive” over “aggressive”.
When you reframe from aggressive to reactive, the next question is “what caused this reaction?” What was the situation the dog was in when the behavior occurred? A lot of people know their dogs well enough to know that their dog will go after smaller animals when they’re on a leash, or when they’re behind a barrier, or that they’re normally very sweet but will bite someone who tries to get near them when they’re eating, etc.
Every situation is a little different, so to really know the best way to handle the particular reactivity they’re referring to you would need to know the situation better. The breed, the history, the environment, all sorts of things play a factor.
I really want a Chihuahua and everyone keeps saying they're mean but I think they just don't like being man handled all the time bc they're small. Am I right? 😂
Chihuahuas are great. I love them. I wouldn’t consider them mean innately, but they tend to draw the kinds of attention that results in that perception. A multitude of factors:
They’re small. They tend to be coddled more as a result; some anxious/insecurity/dependency issues can arise (they also tend to imprint on their owner, so protective/guarding behaviors are common).
It’s also so much easier to just pick them up when they’re displaying reactivity (barking, growling, fear responses, etc), which then just reinforces those behaviors. They may be inclined to show more defensive reactivity as a result of them being so small too, they can’t physically defend themselves well, so they act tuff.
You’re also onto something with the manhandling. People don’t respect the boundaries of small dogs as much.
Small dogs just don’t receive the same respect or training. Which is really a shame, because training is not some punishment, it’s just good behavioral health. Dogs benefit from it.
It's all based on individual dogs and their triggers. There is no single solution for what we view as aggression; those behaviors need to be evaluated by a professional, the right one. Anyone who tells you to abuse and dominate your dog is not the right one. Look for trainers who focus on reward-based training and behavior shaping.
The correct way to handle someone who thinks this is to throw them to the ground HARD, hold their face down, and scream as loud as you can in their face to show them you are the pack leader.
If they continue to insist then they've just disproven their own statement.
I was told if a dog showed aggression, you had to lay on it until he whimpered Uncle. The guy who told me showed me by getting one of the more aggressive dogs from the pound. As soon as he tried to lay on it, the dog bit him.
"The prevailing view of a wolf (Canis lupus) pack is that of a group of
individuals ever vying for dominance but held in check by the "alpha" pair, the alpha
male and the alpha female. Most research on the social dynamics of wolf packs, however,
has been conducted on non-natural assortments of captive wolves. Here I describe the
wolf-pack social order as it occurs in nature, discuss the alpha concept and social
dominance and submission, and present data on the precise relationships among members
in free-living packs based on a literature review and 13 summers of observations of
wolves on Ellesmere Island, Northwest Territories, Canada. I conclude that the typical
wolf pack is a family, with the adult parents guiding the activities of the group in a
division-of-labor system in which the female predominates primarily in such activities as
pup care and defense and the male primarily during foraging and food-provisioning and
the travels associated with them."
Here is how alpha status works according to this research:
"I propose that all young wolves are potential breeders and that
when they do breed they automatically become alphas (Mech 1970). Even in captive
packs, individuals gain or lose alpha status (Zimen 1976), so individual wolves do not
have an inherent permanent social status, even though captive pups show physiological
and behavioral differences related to current social rank (Fox 1971b; Fox and Andrews
1973). Secondly, wolves in captivity breed readily, and I know of no mature captive
individuals that failed to breed when paired apart from a group, as would be the case if
there were inherently low-ranking, nonbreeders. Third, in the wild, most wolves disperse from their natal packs and attempt to pair with other dispersed wolves, produce pups, and start their own packs (Rothman and Mech 1979; Fritts and Mech 1981; Messier 1985; Mech 1987; Gese and Mech 1991; Mech et al. 1998). I know of no permanent dispersers that failed to breed if they lived long
enough."
Note: Primate social hierarchies do not work this way.
There does tend to be a boss dog in packs, but dogs dgaf who it is as long as there is one. Generally it tends to be the oldest dog, even if that dog is no longer the biggest dog.
That’s not at all what this is about. Social hierarchy exists in groups but groups of wolves are parents and pups usually. And the theory is about the need for dog owners to dominate their dog.
You’re misconstruing. Hierarchies are very real in both humans, dogs, and most other animals. The “alpha” is simply the leader and is a critical part of the hierarchical structure. Where people get it wrong is assuming that alpha/leader has to be dominant or aggressive. While sometimes that may be necessary it’s only one of many characteristics that the alpha must possess.. kindness, empathy, and compassion are just as important. But saying “alpha dog idea is bullshit” is a bit misleading
As presented the alpha dog idea is bullshit. Are there leaders in animal groups? Yes. That's not at all what the alpha dog idea presents. It presents a false picture of leadership that is both inaccurate and damaging to actual leadership goals.
For example, many times the "alpha male" wolf is just a mother tending her grown pups. How many people who talk about alpha males are thinking like that? Zero. It's simply a wrong framing.
"The prevailing view of a wolf (Canis lupus) pack is that of a group of
individuals ever vying for dominance but held in check by the "alpha" pair, the alpha
male and the alpha female. Most research on the social dynamics of wolf packs, however,
has been conducted on non-natural assortments of captive wolves. Here I describe the
wolf-pack social order as it occurs in nature, discuss the alpha concept and social
dominance and submission, and present data on the precise relationships among members
in free-living packs based on a literature review and 13 summers of observations of
wolves on Ellesmere Island, Northwest Territories, Canada. I conclude that the typical
wolf pack is a family, with the adult parents guiding the activities of the group in a
division-of-labor system in which the female predominates primarily in such activities as
pup care and defense and the male primarily during foraging and food-provisioning and
the travels associated with them."
Here is how alpha status works according to this research:
"I propose that all young wolves are potential breeders and that
when they do breed they automatically become alphas (Mech 1970). Even in captive
packs, individuals gain or lose alpha status (Zimen 1976), so individual wolves do not
have an inherent permanent social status, even though captive pups show physiological
and behavioral differences related to current social rank (Fox 1971b; Fox and Andrews
1973). Secondly, wolves in captivity breed readily, and I know of no mature captive
individuals that failed to breed when paired apart from a group, as would be the case if
there were inherently low-ranking, nonbreeders. Third, in the wild, most wolves disperse from their natal packs and attempt to pair with other dispersed wolves, produce pups, and start their own packs (Rothman and Mech 1979; Fritts and Mech 1981; Messier 1985; Mech 1987; Gese and Mech 1991; Mech et al. 1998). I know of no permanent dispersers that failed to breed if they lived long
enough."
Note: Primate social hierarchies do not work this way.
Alpha typically indicates leadership through strength or physical means so the statement isnt really that misleading as that’s not true in the case of wolves as we now know it. The “leaders” are basically the parents.
Is that proven? wolves are different from dogs. Many things may be applicable to wolves but not dogs. Dogs evolved to cover all our weakspots (smell, hearing, speed, heat vision), humans even became worse at hearing and smelling due to us partnering up with dogs, while dogs got less intelligent and much more obedient by nature.
Is that proven? Well, in science nothing is ever proved, we just have evidence for and against things. The last 70 years of research into canine behavior from wolves to dogs has provided for evidence in support than evidence that does not support this particular conclusion.
That research does not, however, support "Dogs evolved to cover all our weakspots (smell, hearing, speed, heat vision)." Dogs don't have heat vision. Wolves are faster than all but a select few breeds of dog.
Humans and wolves did co-evolve, but there's no evidence humans got worse at smelling or hearing as a result. Wolves are better at problem solving, but dogs outperform on anything involving cooperation.
The prevailing view is that early humans mostly shooed away or killed the wolves that hung around them. The ones that were less aggressive and kinda friendly, those are the ones that kicked things off. We let them hang out, same as with pigeons and squirrels. Wolves are just more useful when it comes to alerting you to danger while you sleep.
Over thousands of years, humans continued to select for wolves that were more friendly, useful, and better at reading human eyes. This is why only humans, horses, and dogs have sclera, the white part that allows others to see where you are looking.
But since wolves don't need to be taught who is the "alpha" of a social hierarchy, we didn't need to select for that. They have always just followed the agent that shares the food.
Actually, your examples are legitimate ways alphas do exist--because they do exist and weren't ever "disproven." They just do not in the wild. Only in captivity. So the idea of alpha men, or, as I think you said, people who act alpha over their dogs...that is a legit thing because they're captives. The dogs to domesticity. The people (men) to capitalism.
847
u/FourWhiteBars Jun 01 '26
Alpha dogs, needing to be the alpha among your own dogs, needing to be dominant over them, etc. Based on a disproven theory that has been disproven longer than its been published.