“Dominance” is most certainly the most misunderstood topic in dog behaviour and training, especially when a misunderstanding of wolf behavior is applied to dogs, and a misunderstanding of dog-dog behavior is extrapolated to dog-human interactions and training. Laughable attempts by people to mimic wolves or a dog’s mother when training dogs are neither practical nor effective and certainly, no longer laughable when our best friend is treated like our worst enemy. It is easier, quicker, more enjoyable and much more effective to use our superior brain-power to simply teach and motivate dogs how to act appropriately when sharing their lives with people. Regardless, as part of a 30-year study of dog behavior, Dr. Dunbar spent 10 years researching the development of social hierarchical structure, so this is your opportunity to learn about dogs as they really are.
Topics will include:
Dog-Dog Hierarchies: Male-male, female-female, and male-female hierarchies; Female amendments to male hierarchical law; Puppy-adult relationships: Puppy License to Misbehave; Developmental no-contest; Psychological “dominance”; Subordinance hierarchies; Complexity of cooperative social structure; Special friendships and allegiances.
Dog-Dog Play: Reading dog body language; Interpreting barks, growls, and snarls; Atmosphere Cues (meta language); Non-acoustic interpretation: Quantifying play behaviors; Friendly Quotient to objectively assess social savvy and friendliness (or unfriendliness); Purpose of play; Importance of play-fighting and play-biting; Good and bad play groups — producing social mannerly dogs with good bite inhibition, or inattentive social loons and bullies.
Dogfights: Causes; Assessing the severity of dogfights; Fight/Bite Ratios; Prevention & Treatment; Socialization; Classical conditioning; Progressive desensitization; Confidence building exercises; Focal behavior sampling; Representative feedback. Stimulus blocking; Friendly stimulus presentation; Jolly Routine — James-Lang
Dog-Human Interaction & Training: Lupomorphism; Myth of physical dominance; Alpha dogs; Topdogs; Alpha Rollovers; Rank Reduction Programs: And any other daft thing that we do to make the dog’s life a drag.