What is Pack Leadership and Dominance Theory Pack leadership and dominance theory became popular in the late 90’s early 00’s. These assumptions  sprung from the idea that; as a descendent of the wolf the domestic dog  shared a similar behavioural  ecology and therefore the two species should be treated in the same way.  The main ethos of pack  leadership and dominance theory is the idea that your dog is trying to ‘rule’ you; that given half a chance  he will seek to supplant you as boss of the household and become king of his domain.  If your dog has behavioural problems then it is simply because he has climbed too far up the hierarchy in  the household and to correct these problems he needs to be brought down from his magisterial throne.   Following the observed behaviour of wolf packs, a dog which ‘challenges’ their owner for leadership  needs to be physically reprimanded using techniques such as ‘The Alpha Roll’, poked in the groin or  neck, scruffed and shaken and choked with choke chains or prong collars.  The idea being that through  physical punishment your dog will learn to respect you as leader and behave, which was derived from  observations of an alpha wolf’s dominant behaviour towards their submissive followers.    Dogs are NOT Wolves as much as Wolves are NOT Dogs Firstly and the most obvious point to make is that wolves and dogs are DIFFERENT SPECIES.  While they are distantly related and in fact can still breed together, they are not the same animal.  The wolf may be the dogs closest living relative but comparing the two species makes as much sense as comparing humans to bonobos, whales to hippos and elephants to the rock hyrax.  It is believed that humans have lived along side dogs for potentially as long as 15,000 years.  While in  evolutionary terms this is a very small time scale (it took many millions of years for dinosaurs to become  birds!) the dog was not created via natural selection alone. There is much debate over whether humans  domesticated the wolf or the wolf domesticated itself, the argument is purely an academic one.  The wolf  (however it came to live with humans) found a benefit from living close to humans and humans found the  wolf to be just as useful.  From these first wolves came the domestic dog we know and love today.  Over  thousands of years we have selectively bred these animals to create breeds which possessed certain  behavioural characterises of a benefit to ourselves, i.e. hound for hunts, pastoral breeds for herding,  terriers as vermin catchers etc.  In more recent history the behavioural characteristic of the domestic dog  has become less and less important with the advent of showing.  These days it is far more common for  dogs to be selectively bred based on their physical conformation and not their behavioural traits.  The fact that dogs have been separated from wolves for many thousands of years has led to a huge  number of behavioural differences between the two species.  Firstly all evidence points to the fact that  dogs don’t form packs.  The wolf pack is a tight-knit group of mainly related individuals.  The alpha pair  is responsible for the majority of the cubs born into the pack and ALL members help to raise the cubs.   This cooperative breeding system only works when all (or most) members of the group are related to  each other.  The theory behind this cooperative breeding behaviour is known as KIN SELECTION.  It is  not only found in wolves but also in meerkats, many species of ground squirrels and the ground hornbill  just to name a few.  The overall goal of any individual organism is to produce more offspring than their competitors - survival  of the fittest.  The individual which produces the most offspring, which in turn go on to reproduce  themselves, is going to send their genetic material further into the future, when compared to an individual  which produces fewer offspring. If this is the case how can we explain the behaviour of any cooperatively  breeding species - to quote a famous meerkat ‘simples’.  In the wolf pack, the individuals are related to  each other and being related they share a certain amount of genetic material and it is this shared  interested which provides the incentive to help with the rearing of cubs which are not your own.   Cooperative breeding obviously has its costs, for a large proportion of the group members attempting to  rear your own young is a tricky business and you are likely to be ousted from the group or  have your  offspring killed by the dominant pair.  For the dominant individuals you have to constantly hold your  position and maintain the subservience of your followers.  But in almost all cases cooperatively breeding  is the result of need rather than a desire.  A single wolf (or even a pair) is less effective when it comes to  hunting, having 6 wolves in your pack means you can bring down bigger prey and be more effective and  have a higher chance of success on every hunt.  In meerkats the smaller the group the greater the risk of predation. In many cooperatively breeding bird species it is the result of a lack of available nesting sites.   The fact is wolves (and any cooperatively breeding species) need each other for not only their own  individual survival but also the survival of their shared genes.  And here is your first major difference between wolves and dogs.  The domestic dog is very rarely in the  situation of living in a ‘pack’ which contains related individuals and this is MOST IMPORTANT when it  comes to feral (street) dogs.  Feral dogs are as close to ‘wild’ dogs as we can get and if you really want  to study the similarities and differences in wolf and dog behaviour it is with the feral dogs were you need  to start.  Long term studies of street dogs have shown that dogs form loose-knit groups of individuals  which are just as likely to break apart as they are to stay together. The most obvious difference between  feral dogs and wolves is the fact all females within a feral colony will breed.  While two or more  individuals may form a close relationship breeding is not restricted to the alpha pair.  In feral dogs fights  may break out between males to gain the breeding rights to a female in season, this again is NOT seen  in wolves as the alpha male has all the breeding rights simply due to his status within the pack.  The  domestic dog also comes into season twice a year (apart from the basenji which is also the only breed  which does not bark) where as the wolf only has a season once a year.  The domestic dog is therefore NOT a coopertaively breeding species and as such does not need to form  and maintain a tight-knit pack consisting of a alpha pair, with a number of closely related subordinates.   As a result there is no need for alpha animals to dominate subordinates and there is no need for  subordinates to seek to supplant the alpha pair to gain their breeding rights.  In short dogs have no  ecological need for the same dominance behaviour as the wolf. While the dog and wolf can interbreed and create wolf/dog hybrids the chance of such a cross actually  successfully breeding in the wild is slim to none.  Firstly dogs lack the behavioural motivation required to  reach alpha status within the pack and are therefore unlikely to ever be in the position to raise their own  cubs.  Secondly through our invention and selective breeding we have altered the prey drive of the  domestic dog.  The domestic dog is not a predator in the same way a wolf is.  Yes dogs can be trained to  kill other animals but they don’t kill to feed themselves.  In fact all the feral dog populations in the world  are found living close to man and make a living feeding off of what man throws away.  If a group of feral  dogs suddenly became self-sufficient hunters they would no longer be the domestic dog but some other  species all together, like the Dingo.  The chances of a wolf/dog hybrid being able to successfully hunt and kill its own prey for consumption is in the lap of the lottery which is genetic inheritance.  Thirdly when you  compare the adult domestic dog to the adult wolf the domestic dog retains many of the juvenile  characteristics of the wolf.  For example the domestic dog barks, but only the wolf cub barks and when  reaching adulthood the bark develops into the characterise howl.  The ears of a wolf don’t ‘prick’ until they are reaching maturity and when the dog was domesticated floppy ears were common to them all.  If you  look at the oldest breeds of dog the majority of them have floppy ears and it is only our intervention which has crated breeds with pricked ears.  In short to an adult wolf an adult dog would more closely resemble  a juvenile wolf than a mature wolf which is ready to breed.  The fact that hybrids are highly unlikely to  survive in the wild and most importantly go on to successfully reproduce themselves clearly  demonstrates the behavioural and physiology differences between the two species and as a result clearly shows why treating your dog like a wolf is about a useful as treating your fellow man as a chimp!   What Makes a Good Dog When our human ancestors first began to selectively breed these ‘domestic’ wolves and select for  specific behavioural traits the evolution from wolf to dog began.  The early dog was designed to help man and in return the dog got easy food, warmth and shelter.  Another highly academic argument is whether  we selected dogs on the basis of their ability to follow human signals or whether this ability developed in  the dog by chance.  Again in many respects an irrelevant argument as the fact is the domestic dog is  highly sensitive to human body language and has the ability to follow our commands.  Which when you  think about it makes perfect sense.  Think of the working collie, how much use would he be if he never  listened to the farmer?  To create an animal which actually wants to work for humans (which dogs most  certainly do) would you create an animal that given half a chance wanted to rule over you or an animal  which was happy to take direction and follow commands.    In fact our modern day dog is so sensitive to human body language and micro expression we often imbue  them with the extra sensory power of mind reading.  It may seem that our dog knows what we are about  to do before we do it but actually they are simply reading our body language and micro expressions  which signal to the dog that it is almost dinner time, or walk time to even the day for that visit to the  groomer.  In evolutionary terms the only reason for this development of this behaviour is to allow the dog  to follow human commands more effectively and an animal which has evolved this ability to FOLLOW  humans is not an animal which wants to dominate humans.    Dogs are Dogs! Treating a dog like a wolf is not only unfair on the dog, a species which is utterly unique in its symbiotic  relationship with man, but by doing so we are doing a complete disservice to the species which is known  as ‘Mans’ Best Friend’.  The idea that a dog will learn to respect you as a result of physical punishment is  not only laughable but in truth barbaric! All you will teach a dog in such circumstances is to to fear you  and rightly so!  Dogs’ aren’t bad dogs because they think they believe they are lord of the manor, they  misbehave for many different reasons; fear, boredom, stress, anxiety, and even the most obvious - a lack of training.  The dog is a dog, a loyal, trusting creature which wants more than anything to be part of our  lives and we owe it to them to treat them as such.