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Alpha vs. Dominance vs. Training Relationship
I was recently asked by a fellow dog trainer if I’ve ever used positive reinforcement training methods on any animals other than dogs. She was thrilled when I responded that yes, I’ve trained horses this way as well.
Everyone loves horses. Including Ines. In fact she rode horses and took jumping lessons when she was a young girl. I spent many days as a young girl riding horses. If we only lived in the same area we might as well have been best friends. When I wasn’t riding, I was day dreaming about riding, or drawing horses, or pretending I was riding a horse going over homemade jumps in the backyard. (Which turned out to be great practice for dog agility, btw…)
Ines had so many questions for me- did I use a clicker, what did I use as motivation, do horses generalize as well as dogs, are they similar to train to dogs? There were so many questions, and I didn’t really know how to answer them at first. I had to think and really evaluate exactly what my experiences had been. I had been around horses for so long; training had become an automatic way to interact with horses.
You see, horses make you a trainer whether you want to be or not.
Horses are different from dogs in some respects, but two differences stand out the most to me. One is that horses are prey animals. This opens up a whole new set of rules. No exciting the horse. No hurting the horse. And no scaring the horse. When a horse is scared, nervous/excited, or hurt he will go into flight mode. The technical term is fight or flight, but I will tell you from many, many years of experiences that few horses will fight. When a horse is ready to flee for his life you just cannot teach him anything. Once a horse is in flight mode he has physical responses that he has no control over. His nostrils flare and his heart accelerates in order to deliver extra oxygen to his muscles. Adrenaline starts coursing throughout his body. He stops thinking. His instincts take over and his only concern now is escaping what he perceives as danger… you.
However, one plus side to dealing with a prey animal is that you don’t have to worry about the horses chasing squirrels or cats.
The second BIG difference is their size. A small horse weighs around 800 pounds. An average sized horse weighs 1100 pounds. My horse weighs 1400 pounds. Simply put, it’s just not safe to have bad behavior from an animal this large. Unfortunately for the horse, there are people who use this as permission to use aversive methods. While it is admittedly hard to physically injure an animal this large, it is incredibly easy to frighten, and even traumatize, them.
And yet there are a lot of similarities. Both animals work great with a clicker. Both animals are easily conditioned to the clicker by using treats. Both animals try to mug you for your treats. Both animals try to get away with whatever they can… All of these examples lead to one conclusion…
Horses and Dogs learn the same way. Through operant conditioning.
Operant conditioning simply means that the animal (the operant) can be conditioned by their environment to either increase or decrease behavior. Good things, like the sound of a clicker, increase the frequency of the behavior. This is why we only click when something desirable happens…like obeying a command. It also means they both learn to avoid ’bad things’ in the future.
But what really stands out to me about training horses and dogs is that the owners in both worlds confuse the same terms of alpha and dominance. Nor do they understand the impact that the ‘training relationship’ has on the animal.
Alpha is a term that horse and dog people alike use in excess. I hear people talk about how they had to show their dog/horse who is alpha. Or that their dog/horse won’t mess with them because they’re alpha. I have to admit…I have to consciously keep myself from rolling my eyes when I hear this.
You see, Alpha is a term that is widely misunderstood. The boring history of the term ’Alpha’ is that a long time ago researchers wanted to understand wolf pack dynamics. They assembled groups of captured wolves and released them into a ‘pack‘so they could study their behavior. This was the first mistake.
A pack is always a family unit…much like a human ‘pack’. You have Mommy, Daddy…and then the babies. What the first researchers did was turn a wolf pack into a co-ed college dorm. Needless to say- it was chaos. Wolves were constantly fighting each other for status (because status meant survival) and the most dominant wolf was called the ‘Alpha‘.
Since then research on actual family packs show that this is not the case in nature. In nature, being the Alpha simply means they are the parents. And they do parental things…like supplying food and keeping the family safe. In fact, in scientific studies the term Alpha has been replaced with “breeding pair”. By the way, most packs are only the parents and their children three years and younger. By the time the wolves reach four years old, they’ve dispersed and found a mate and are forming packs of their own. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? …okay, maybe four years is a little young, but according to http://www.pets.webmd.com four dog years equals 32 years old in human years.
But what you really need to know is that no matter what breed, no matter what age- dogs DO NOT form packs with humans. They don’t even form packs with each other, if they are not related.
That means all the scruff shakes, pin downs, alpha rolls, choke outs, growling and yes, even biting – won’t mean a thing to your dog. Other than you’re a little unstable.
And think about it – do you really want to act more like a dog? Or do you want your dog to act a little more human?
I mentioned another term that people misinterpret in both the horse and the dog world. Dominance. I see people all the time, both with dogs and horses, picking fights that don’t need to be fought. All in the name of dominance. I’m going to clue you into a really important point about dominance…
Dominance is completely dependent upon the other party being more willing to submit than you are.
Therefore- dominance is completely relational. You can be dominant over your dog, but your dog may be dominant over your son or daughter…or spouse. You can be dominant over the entire household, but the rest of the members of the house, including the spouse, kids and animals are fighting for their place in the social structure. And this fight is ongoing. One of the parties can suddenly decide they aren’t willing to submit anymore and then the chaos starts all over again.
So how do you deal with this? How can dominance work for you? First of all, you need to take a realistic appraisal of the dominance chain of command. I always like to picture a ladder, with the most dominant on top. This (hopefully a) person is just not willing to have it any way but their’s. You’ll know your dog is ‘top dog’ if he:
- Sits on the couch and won’t move when you ask
- Takes his space on your bed, and you position yourself around him
- Takes food right off your plate and right in front of you too!
After you have an idea of who is at the top you need to a) make sure it’s a human (if it’s not contact a professional trainer immediately!) b) make sure this human is responsible for all those underneath them on the ladder c) use their position to move other (human) family members up the ladder. This involves establishing a training relationship.
I’ll be honest…in my house the social ladder isn’t perfect. I’m at the top, the dog is next, and then my poor husband is below the dog. How does this happen? Well…it‘s a combination of our natural personalities and the training relationships that have (or haven‘t been built). My hubby is more or less a peace keeper – with both dogs and humans. Our dog is his buddy so he’s happy. You’ll never see my husband ‘training’ the dog, though occasionally he’ll ask him to sit before he feeds him a yummy treat. But I often find myself having to control or command the dog for my husband. Since our particular dog is ’obliviously happy’ it hasn’t seemed to present any safety concerns, but there are times I would like my husband to directly handle the dog.
Dominance doesn’t have to be a messy, aggressive situation. It’s just a willingness to submit by one party. Dominance is NOT aggression.
If a dog is naturally passive you may find him sink to the lower end of the social ladder, if he’s naturally more dominant he will continue to test each person in the house to raise himself higher and higher on the ladder. Think of it as a ‘type A’ / ‘type B’ personality.
I have met many owners who are not well suited for the dog’s personality. Left to their own devices pairings like my husband and the semi-dominant dog would shortly grow into a turbulent power struggle. What hope do dog owners have? Well the good thing is that even if you aren’t dominant by nature, you can learn to ask (and expect) certain behaviors from your dog that will help keep the balance in order.
The other key point to remember is that you need to follow through with your requests. If you want your dog to get down from the couch- he must get down! I one time had a very dominant dog (not aggressive, just unwilling to submit) who decided on one particular day that he wasn’t getting off the couch. Instead of engage in a one on one argument, I went behind the couch and tipped it forward until he had to get down. And believe me, he hung in there! What you may be surprised to know is that once his feet hit the ground I immediately marked and praised him…
Remember…any owner IS a trainer. And your dog is either constantly getting better, or getting worse.
That’s right. This is where the ‘training relationship’ comes in. By simply training your dog with positive reinforcement you can establish yourself as the more dominant personality. Every time you ask your dog to use ‘impulse control’ in your training, you are asking him to submit. Whenever you are the sole provider of all things yummy and wonderful, you are showing that you are the leader…even if you’re not a real pack. He must submit to you to get what he wants. In other words you are the key to his environmental quality.
About the Author
Dee Slawson is a professional dog trainer residing in the Washington D.C. area. Dee specializes in teaching owners how to understand and communicate with their dogs effectively. She reminds people that training is not about dogs learning a new trick – it’s about changing their life.
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You may also visit Dee’s website at www.DeeSlawson.com
A video of Cesar Millan is going around the internet right now of him training a dog. Thought I’d give it a look and sure enough it was an episode I had previously watched back before I had crossed over. I was surprised at my reaction. With all the new knowledge on dog behavior and emotions, I was rather appalled while I watched him hold the dog up at the end of a slip lead – “hanging” the dog. Before, when I was a fan, I would have understood and agreed with his methods. I would have seen this as the dog was being dominant and needed to submit to the exercise, that the dog needed to become calm submissive in this situation – around other dogs. I was well versed in his descriptive dog behavior language. However, my reaction today was completely the opposite! I wanted to yell though the computer at him to tell him to stop choking the dog! This reaction actually surprised me, this was the first time I had really watched one of his episodes since my crossing over. It truly pained me to watch this poor husky be strangled and tortured – the dog showed so much discomfort and panic as he chewed at the leash to try to set himself free. He jumped up not to be “dominant to Cesar, but to try to alleviate the pressure around his neck – as any normal living-being would! It hit me hard because I saw my own dog in that position. Loker, who is a husky mix, would have most likely done the same thing. I probably had done this to him myself at some point (although not to this intensity). I am so glad I am through with that kind of “training.” In fact, it really isn’t even training. You aren’t teaching the dog to do ANYTHING, you are choking it out so that it gives up and becomes a zombie… The dog in this video, Shadow, did not want to be near the other dog. He wanted to get away and was already in “fight or flight” mode, but since he could not get away, he was forced to fight. When a dog is in that mode, or anyone for that matter, they know their safety is in danger and you cannot expect ANYONE (dog or human) to learn anything while in this state of mind.
But how do I know he wants to get away? Well, there is a series of body language signals I saw. If you watch at 0:34, Shadow actually backs up and tries to get behind Cesar, he is trying to avoid confrontation with the other dog. If you watch at minute 2:50, he is avoiding eye contact despite being super close to the other dog. In general, Shadow never really ever charges at the other dog, Cesar never lets him get to that point because as soon as Shadow shows interest or alertness, he is “corrected” or choked. Shadow’s face expresses concern – in my eyes. Every time Cesar chokes him out, he tries to chew the leash to escape. When Cesar puts him on the ground, Shadow is still tense – licking his lips (calming signal) as well as a bent front leg which shows tension at about 4:15 of the video. His eyes are squinting at this time which is not a sign of relaxation – in this case it is stiffness and tension.
Cesar approaches dogs as if they are still highly primal animals, but really they are incredibly intelligent and are capable of creating new emotional reactions to stimuli with our (humans) help and proper training – through building new associations in their mind of the stimuli. I wish people would realize this – I am sure glad I did!
Last week I went to Loker’s second group training class “Courteous Canines” taught by the talented Stacy Greer (who will guest post soon!) of Adventures in Canine Training (http://aictdfw.com). I had a friend record some of the class so that I could share with you all!
Recently I had a request to talk about training a dog to come when called or “recall”. Luckily enough, this is one of the topics we covered in Stacy’s class last week! With Stacy’s permission, I have posted the video below for all to hear and learn from.
When you want a dog to come, you have to make yourself the best object of interest in the environment. You have to be better than everything else around – dogs, birds, squirrels, people, kids, etc. That is why high-pitched, excited voices and delicious treats play such a bit role in that. You wont need to keep it like that forever (although your dog would love it), but you do need to do this for the beginning of training. Have someone hold your dog back on a leash as you show him the treats and walk or jog away a few feet. Your dog should be pulling at the leash trying to follow you (if he isn’t then you haven’y built up enough value for yourself in his eyes and you need better treats or act more exciting.) Then turn and look at your dog and yell his name and the word “come”. When you say his name, your friend should drop the leash and your dog should come barreling towards you! When he gets to you wait for him to sit in front of you and then click and treat! This exercise is so much fun for both you and the dog. When you call your dog something good should always come out of it for the dog. Never call your dog over to punish him.
Keep in mind Loker already knows this command so he knew exactly what to do in this video, however, if you do exactly as Stacy says your dog should do the same thing whether or not he knows the command. I recommend starting in your home or in the backyard where there are the least distractions possible. Gradually, you can do this in more and more distracting areas.
After a few years working with people and their dogs and teaching them the “wrong” info, I am feeling a bit down. There is no way to go back in time and teach them these new strategies. I only hope that I have not completely ruined the lives of the dogs I worked with and I hope that those past clients found another trainer to teach them otherwise.
I am looking forward to being able to successfully help future clients. There are hundreds of lives that I can still help and teach. That is the reason for this blog. I hope I can reach people before they even start training their dogs and show them the better, more dog-friendly way to train dogs. Hopefully through this blog I can achieve: 1) help other trainers crossover, 2) help dog owners decide what kind of trainer they want to go with. Sharing my experiences allows people see first hand the differences that I am experiencing so that they make an educated decision for themselves. (Questions are ALWAYS welcome by the way!!) There are so many dogs out there that need my help and with all the new info I am excited to teach them!
A method that I have been wanting to try for a while now is called Shaping. This involves no luring or direction from the trainer and simply a click/treat when the dog does something right. You work up step by step until the dog is performing the goal behavior regularly and then you add the cue. I finally got a chance to do this with Loker. I want to teach him how to jump through a Hula hoop and I must admit, it was hard on my part to resist luring him through the hoop with a treat. I really wanted this to be all on his terms and learning at his pace to see how a true shaping exercise proceeds.
Our goal: Jump Through a Hula hoop.
Luckily, he was not scared of the Hula hoop to begin with. Some dogs who are under socialized or shy may not be comfortable with this strange object. This is the progression of steps I was looking for through the process: click when he approached or touched the hoop, click when he stuck his head through, click when he took a step through, click when he walked all the way through, and finally, raise the hoop a little and click when he does a small jump through the hoop. Keep in mind that these steps are not always in order. A couple of times Loker just went straight through the hoop, this does not mean he “got” what I was trying to teach him. Although I was not asking for this behavior yet, I still made it a “jackpot” as in he got some excitement from me and a few extra treats to reinforce that behavior. He did not offer that behavior again for a little while so I still rewarded the simpler steps like approaching the hoop or sticking his head through it.
Something that caught me completely by surprise was that he started targeting the hoop itself! So far we had only worked on targeting a red spatula, but here you can clearly see him poking the hoop with his nose like he would the spatula! That was really fun and cool to see. It was a nice default behavior to get him to approach the hoop to start out with. It is so adorable to see his brain thinking.
Shaping was so much fun. I am looking forward to other tricks that I will be able to teach through shaping!
The Crossover Trainer 