How Dominance Can Make You Dumb
"Words are all we have, really. We have thoughts but thoughts are fluid. then we assign a word to a thought and we're stuck with that word for that thought, so be careful with words." - George Carlin
Generally speaking I don't like quibbling over words. I tend to agree with Dr. Dunbar - stop talking and start training. But staying away from the word "dominance" and its variations when you are a dog trainer is almost as difficult as staying away from the Yankees when you live in the NYC area.
It's so frustrating that it leads me to be, as Tom Cruise would put it, glib. Glib enough that I recently twitted (twittered? tweeted? chirped? belched?) "Dominance makes you dumb."
First, there's what's on TV. Enough said.
Then there's the clients (many of whom watch TV.) If a dog is displaying any sort of disobedient or disruptive behavior there's at least a 50% chance that she will be labeled as "dominant" when I am called. (There's also a 25% chance that she has "separation anxiety," but that's another rant.) This 50% only goes up if the dog is male, if the person contacting me is male, or if the dog is about 8 - 18 months old.
And of course there's the Internet. I'm pretty sure that at this point there are more websites dedicated to debunking dominance theory than there are espousing it. There's certainly enough e-mail traffic discussing it, probably more than enough. In the old days when we called each other names on Usenet (as opposed to calling each other names on Yahoo groups like we do now) there was an unofficial rule that any thread mentioning "Hitler" or "Nazi" immediately be shut down by the moderator or at least abandoned by the users. I've considered suggesting this for threads that mention "dominance" if for no other reason than just to avoid the inevitable flood of "harrumphs," but a lot of these people don't share my sense of humor.
Generally speaking, "Dominance" is used one of two ways when referring to dogs:
In one context, it's used to indicate a relationship where an individual has priority access to resources. It defines a position in a relationship, similar to the way the word is used in everyday language: "The Yankees are dominant in their division (ugh.)" or "Sales of the Prius dominated the fourth quarter." This kind of dominance is very real. It exists in many groups of different species of animals as a way to avoid (or at least quickly resolve) aggression. Aggression is really, really, expensive and evolutionary pressure tends to try to avoid it when possible. (I haven't quite figured out what the problem is with Homo sapiens though. Probably video games or high-fructose corn syrup.)
I like to call this the "reality-based" context.
In the other context, let's call it "fantasy-based," dominance is, as Dr. Sophia Yin so wonderfully put it, a personality trait. It describes a dog that is well, hell bent on domination. (S)he requires constant reminders that you are in charge, the "pack leader."
Check out an excerpt from this masterpiece:
Well, not any more than the 100 other subtle things you must do to communicate that you are the pack leader. I always stress to new dog owners that the more things you're doing to reinforce that you are the pack leader for your dog, will make your dog view you as the pack leader, faster.
This is the dominance that makes you dumb. It makes you fret over who goes through doors first and who walks in front of who on the street. It makes otherwise intelligent people spit in kibble before they let their dogs eat it. This kind of dominance is a prism that makes some people see their relationship with their dogs as an ongoing struggle for supremacy. It anthropomorphizes dogs in the worst possible way because it overlays a uniquely human perspective onto a dog's mind and then punishes him for it.
I wish I could ignore it, but I since I encounter it with my clients, it's a fact of life. I have to be ready to skillfully and genially interrupt and redirect. Fortunately, more often than not simply showing what can be accomplished without any force or intimidation goes a long way.
