Elsevier

Journal of Veterinary Behavior

Volume 4, Issue 3, May–June 2009, Pages 135-144
Journal of Veterinary Behavior

Review
Dominance in domestic dogs—useful construct or bad habit?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2008.08.004Get rights and content

Abstract

The term “dominance” is widely used in the academic and popular literature on the behavior of domestic dogs, especially in the context of aggression. Although dominance is correctly a property of relationships, it has been erroneously used to describe a supposed trait of individual dogs, even though there is little evidence that such a trait exists. When used correctly to describe a relationship between 2 individuals, it tends to be misapplied as a motivation for social interactions, rather than simply a quality of that relationship. Hence, it is commonly suggested that a desire ‘to be dominant’ actually drives behavior, especially aggression, in the domestic dog. By contrast, many recent studies of wolf packs have questioned whether there is any direct correspondence between dominance within a relationship and agonistic behavior, and in contrast to wolves, hierarchical social structures have little relationship with reproductive behavior in feral dog packs. Nor do the exchanges of aggressive and submissive behavior in feral dogs, originally published by S. K. Pal and coworkers, fit the pattern predicted from wolf behavior, especially the submissive behavior observed between members of different packs. In the present study of a freely interacting group of neutered male domestic dogs, pairwise relationships were evident, but no overall hierarchy could be detected. Since there seems to be little empirical basis for wolf-type dominance hierarchies in dogs, the authors have examined alternative constructs. Parker's Resource Holding Potential (RHP) appears to be less useful when applied to domestic dogs than to other species, although it has the advantage of incorporating the concept of subjective resource value (V) as a factor influencing whether or not conflicts are escalated. The authors propose that associative learning, combined with V, can provide more parsimonious explanations for agonistic behavior in dogs than can the traditional concept of dominance.

Introduction

The term “dominance” is widely used to both categorize and explain the behavior of domestic dogs. The assumption that dogs are strongly motivated to establish hierarchical relationships with each other, for example in multidog households and with their human cohabitants, has been widespread in the literature and informs recommended treatment protocols for unwanted aggression toward both other dogs and people (Landsberg et al., 2003). However, the benefit of using the concept of “dominance” in the diagnosis and treatment of dogs that have displayed aggression has recently been called into question (Shepherd, 2002, p. 19; van Kerkhove, 2004, Eaton, 2007), and some clinicians have come to avoid referring to it. In this article the authors extend van Kerkhove's argument in 3 areas; the inappropriate use of the term “dominance” as a characteristic of an individual dog, the application of outdated models of wolf pack organization to explain aspects of dog behavior, and the use of “dominance” as a characteristic that determines relationships both between pairs of dogs and between dogs and their owners.

Section snippets

Inappropriate use of the word “dominance” as a description of an individual animal

Confusion still arises through the use of the term “dominant” as a character trait of an individual dog. Although some authors in the clinical behavior literature have warned against the use of the term “dominant” to describe individual dogs (Shepherd, 2002, p. 18), there are also many examples in the dog training literature and the popular media, where “dominance” is described as a characteristic of an individual dog. Kovary (1999) writes: “A dominant dog knows what he wants, and sets out to

Use of “dominance” to describe the quality of a relationship

Even when used to describe relationships, “dominance” has still been employed in a variety of senses in the ethological literature (Drews, 1993). It has been used to characterize both the outcomes of competitions in which animals meet for the first time, or otherwise do not recognize their opponents, and those in which the history of encounters between the individuals in the dyad is remembered and becomes a factor influencing the outcome. Both uses have been applied to dogs, which may be

The wolf

Because the domestic dog Canis lupus familiaris is descended from the wolf Canis lupus, it is often assumed that its capacity to form social relationships is similar to that of the wolf (Sherman et al., 1996, Lindsay, 2000, Feddersen-Petersen, 2007), including a predilection to establish dominance relationships with all individuals, whatever their species, within the social unit. This “wolf pack” theory of companion dog sociality appears to be pervasive within the clinical literature but has

Feral dogs

Some of these objections could be addressed if the social behavior and structures of freely associating dogs could be observed. Van Kerkhove (2004), reviewing 5 studies of feral dogs published between 1975 and 1995, concluded that their pack structure is very loose and rarely involves any cooperative behavior, either in raising young or in obtaining food. It is possible that the absence of wolf-type cooperation in these feral dogs, and their overall social instability, may have been a result of

Social behavior of neutered dogs

Much of the aggressive behavior observed by Pal and colleagues in feral packs appeared to arise from disputes over territory and access to sexual partners. Since aggression between companion dogs is not restricted to sexually entire individuals, the wolf pack dominance structure would also have to apply to neutered dogs to explain all dog–dog aggression within households. Accordingly, the authors have studied a semipermanent group of 19 neutered male domestic dogs, maintained by a rehoming

Alternative approaches to interpreting social interactions between dogs

The Resource Holding Potential (RHP) model, invented by Parker (1974) to separate physical fighting ability (RHP) from likelihood of competing in a given set of circumstances, has been proposed by several authors as an alternative framework for explaining relationships between dogs (Wickens, 1993, Shepherd, 2002, Lindsay, 2005). The RHP model is more generally applicable than dominance to disputes between individuals, since it does not require any kind of prior relationship between the

Is “dominance” a useful construct in the interpretation of interactions between domestic dogs?

In the clinical literature, aggression between dogs within a social unit has been widely ascribed to competition for social status when signaling has failed to resolve conflicts over resources (Landsberg et al., 2003). Thus, aggression between dogs is often interpreted in terms of dominance rank and the existence of a hierarchy within the members of a multidog household (van Kerkhove, 2004), although some authors acknowledge that the capacity to form hierarchies is likely to vary from breed to

Interactions between dogs and owners

Many authors also use the concept of “dominance” to describe aggression toward owners, particularly where this behavior occurs over a valued resource (Landsberg et al., 2003, p. 422; Houpt, 2006). However, since other models appear to provide better explanations for the complexity of social relationships between dogs, there is no reason to suppose that “trying to achieve status” is characteristic of dog–human interactions either. In fact, the patterns of interactions between dogs and owners

Conclusion

The term “dominance” has been applied in so many contexts, and so widely misused in writings on dog behavior, that it is opportune to examine whether there are alternative, more parsimonious explanations for why dogs sometimes display aggression. The analogies drawn between the social behavior of dogs and that of their ancestral species, the wolf, appear to refer to a model of wolf sociality that has now been disputed for over 30 years. Moreover, when dogs are able express their social and

Acknowledgments

We thank Claire Cooke and Nicola Robertson for permission to describe their study of neutered male dogs; Stephen Wickens for discussions of RHP; and the clinical behaviorists, too numerous to mention individually, with whom we have debated the dominance concept. John Bradshaw thanks the Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition for financial support.

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