For pure positive trainers, boundaries have no obvious or necessary connection to corrections. And in “pure positive” training, which rejects the use of corrections altogether, boundaries are taught in noncorrective “ boundary games,” in which the dog is showered with treats and praise for remaining in a certain area. Unlike Millan, most trainers today who advocate for the use of some corrections reject dominance theory and do not rely on a “pack leader” framework. Millan presents alpha rolls as a tool for only the most aggressive dogs, though experts say that this can actually worsen aggression and lead to a bite. The most common nonverbal corrections are leash jerking and the use of choke and prong collars, but Millan also advocates for the use of “alpha rolls,” in which the dog is pushed onto its side and held down until it stops struggling and surrenders. His approach equates setting boundaries with correction and “consequences”-another word for punishment. And none of this has anything to do with domestic dogs: Animal behaviorists agree that when dominance-submission relationships do occur in nature, they are a means to allocate resources, a problem that does not reflect what happens between dogs and humans at home.Īnd yet, Millan-who, yes, came on the scene after the theory he uses was debunked-obsessively repeats the idea that owners must set boundaries in order for dogs to be happy and healthy, and that one of those boundaries is teaching the dog who is boss. They are simply the parents: In addition to being the only ones who reproduce, they teach manners to the rest of the pack. There is no one pack leader even the breeding pair is not “dominant” in any of the usual meanings. The breeding pair mate for life and are the oldest individuals in the group, the ones who never leave. These wolves live in families and are led by breeding pairs, not individuals. Wolf researchers, most notably Dave Mech in 2000, showed that the alpha paradigm does not apply to wolves in the wild. His findings were true of the specific wolves he studied-but they were erroneously extrapolated onto wild wolves, and then onto dogs, and finally onto dog-human interaction. Such fights result in the strongest individual, the alpha, leading the pack. Based on his study of captive, unrelated wolves, Schenkel concluded that packs consists of individuals who fight for dominance. Alpha theory was introduced by Swiss zoologist Rudolf Schenkel in 1947.
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