This is a good resource to provide for those still adhering to the alpha theory. It is a great little interview with Dr. David Mech who coined the term alpha. His book released in 1970 was taken to task by his peers after it was published since his research was based on observation of a group of unrelated captive wolves (a wolf pack is simply a family...a primary breeding pair and their offspring). These wolves had all been captured in different areas around the U.S. due to being considered bothersome for eating ranchers livestock. What his peers pointed out after the book went to #1 on the NY bestsellers list, was that this group of wolves was actually an artificial situation and did not give a true picture of the ethology of wolves since they were unrelated and thrown together in an area far too small and they were all now in direct competition for primary resources for survival and as a result, observers saw more dominance aggression (using force to assert first right access to primary resources) than we would see in a pack in its natural setting. Unfortunately, as he says in the interview, he is partly to blame for the popularity of the term. From there, popular trainers like the Monks of New Skeet and Cesar Millan who have not updated themselves to what science now knows about dominance, continue to perpetuate the overuse and blanket application of it as the root cause of everything dogs do. It can be a difficult thing to explain to the average dog owner because we cannot say it does not exist and it can be quite complex. I explain to classes and clients that it is far less common than the public is led to believe and it is not, as many trainers would have people believe, the root cause of everything all dogs do. youtube/watch?v=tNtFgdwTsbU
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 13:06:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015