# Aggression and Dominance



## DaneMama (Jun 27, 2008)

*What is Aggression and Dominance?
Sarah Kalnajs and my personal notes​*
*What is Aggression:*

* The most accurate definition I have found:

_“Adaptive effort to establish control over some vital resource or situation that cannot be effectively controlled through other means….An active and purposeful effort aimed at obtaining various ends through the assertion of threats or attacks.”_ 

Steven R. Lindsay, Handbook Of Applied Dog Behavior and Training.

*Never punish communication. If a dog is communicating and is punished for doing so, eventually the dog will learn not to communicate. This will resort to the next level of communication, which can have devastating results. If a dog is trained that growling is bad to communicate to a child that he doesn’t want the child crawling all over him, the dog may resort to the next level which is nipping or biting. This is not a good or ideal situation. Let dogs communicate with other dogs and people the way they know how. 

*Aggression can stem from many different places and reasons and is usually a very complex behavior problem.

*What is Dominance?*

*Relationship between two or more individuals, not a personality trait.

*Not a bad personality trait, even though it has negative connotations associated with it.

*Leadership does NOT equal dominance rather compliance leads to rewards

*David Mech came up with Dominance theory about wolves, which cannot be thrown out completely but rather modified.

*Alpha is a fluid state, depends on who holds the resources.


----------



## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

danemama08 said:


> *David Mech came up with Dominance theory about wolves, which cannot be thrown out completely but rather modified.
> 
> *Alpha is a fluid state, depends on who holds the resources.


David Mech has since renounced his dominance theory and said it was wrong and he wished he had never presented it. 

YouTube - "Alpha" Wolf?

This video is not the original one I saw where he made the above statements but he does explain himself in this video. I can't find the original video I saw a couple of months ago.


----------



## DaneMama (Jun 27, 2008)

Oh I know he has. And really its just been redefined so to speak because dominance does happen in the structure of a wolf pack but not as it was originally thought. Its more of a maternal/paternal structure of dominance and not that dogs fought to get their positions of power. These "dominant" dogs of the pack are also the ones that usually hold the "resources" for the rest of the pack since they form the base structure for hunting and protection, etc.


----------



## jiml (Jun 29, 2010)

he also states in that same vid that the term Alpha is entirely acceptable for non-familial packs where a dominance and a pecking order will occur


----------



## DaneMama (Jun 27, 2008)

The meaning of "alpha" is purely contextual. It all depends on the particular interaction between two individuals. Alpha is not a personality trait.

Confidence on the other hand is a personality trait. Typically confident dogs tend to be alpha in more contexts than compared to more reserved dogs.


----------

