The Dominance Theory ..... Is it all wrong? - Page 3

jc carrol.....re read what I said, I'm pretty sure right after I typed that I also typed I may have read that wrong.

Interesting answer, JCCarrol...

Here is an example:

We have two female dogs: Misty, who is a 1.5 year old Border Collie, Aussie mix.  Little dog, about 30 pounds.  Then we have Oakley, four months younger than Misty, German Shepherd.  Both spayed young, no other intact dogs around, male or female.

They run and play a lot, a lot of growling, jumping, tumbling, typical dog playing...Play bows, barking, all that.  Running and chasing are also part of their games.  Now, sometimes when Oakley goes too far, beyond what Misty is willing to put up with, she will typically get very serious and nip Oakley, along with a sharp bark, followed by putting her head and neck over Oakley's lowered head, jumping up and putting her paws over Oakley's neck or head, or standing over her while she is down on the ground.  Sometimes that behavior is followed by humping, sometimes not.  That behavior I classify as dominance, as though Misty is reinforcing to Oakley that she is the dominant female, and that Oakley has overstepped her bounds.  Occasionally, Misty will do the above when they have not been playing, such as first thing in the morning.

At other times, Oakley will be standing somewhere, or walking, and Misty will just come up behind her, mount her, and start humping for all she's worth.  Oakley won't tolerate it, and takes off.  So I'm not convinced that that particular occasion it is about dominance, because Oakley's response is totally different than when such behavior follows a spat.  By the same token, Oakley is not a dominant dog, and I have never seen her hump anything.  

Oakley was spayed at nine weeks, and Misty at seven months, before her first heat.

Crys

Two Moons, Timothy Treadwell, that is an interesting comparison!  I saw "Grizzly Man", he did not truly understand the animal and he thought he could humanize it and live in peace together, he thought he was "protecting" them, then he was killed and eaten by a Grizzly.  In the movie, they interviewed a Native American man who said (paraphrasing from my memory) that he did not respect or love the animal, and in their culture they leave the wild animals alone and accept them for what they are.  In this way, maybe people cannot accept what dogs are.  They bring them to a level of humans then are surprised when they are not listening or when the dog does something extreme like kill a child, afterall it's an animal.  Human psychology can't always be applied to dogs, they have their own communication.

Doberdoodle,

Anthropomorphizing is the death of understanding animals.

 dominance theory .. it is not all wrong ... and ... simultaneously it is not all correct !! the ethologists vs. the behaviorists... frankly ... they both exist in union .. like a coin .. both side of a coin at the same time .. we genetically  selectively bred for dogs , yes .. so the genetics are derived from wolves.. the behavioral traits we see, ambushing , pointing , trailing , rounding up ,  stalking , attacking , chasing ,, whining , snarling , growling .. guarding etc etc .. [ hunting behaviors , communication  etc] are innate behavioral traits we manipulated... wolves form rank structure and hierarchy .. so don't  dogs and other mammals .. they also have character and temperament traits just as people do .. they can be independent, dependent, social  , hard or sensitive etc etc. they are like wolves but not wolves .. they are like people but not people. the difficulty is people don't " think  dog" but rather think that , dogs think as we think .  .. they do but they don't . a dog can try to rank you , lord over you for resources .. but just because a dog wants to lie on the sofa .. that has nothing to do with rank and dominance.. it does so because it is not stupid .. it thinks .. it knows a that  sofa is warmer / cooler or more comfortable .. the same with a dog on a leash .. a dog in front pulling most often isn't even thinking of you .. has nothing to do with dominance .. it is just simply exhibiting exploratory or investigative behavior .. same with training .. how often do we correct dogs because WE didn't communicate what the behavior should be properly or the dog just simply making a mistake vs the dog knowingly , willingly defying us?? just as one thread on this forum questioned a dog biting in the blind .. it does so because we didn't teach it correctly .. a dog doesn't out 99% of the time because we didn't teach it correctly !! If trainers truely understood the canine mind .. they would know that DOMINANCE  isn't the issue , most often true dominance over an animal ruins that animal !! Rather seek to have DOMINION over an animal [ canine]... for ethologist and behaviorists  alike that is more proper for the Human / Animal relationship !!

it doesn't make sense to say "anthropomorphizing is the death understanding of animals." humans are animals. maybe you mean non-humans. so, if I kick a dog and it whines and whimpers, I shouldn't assume it feels pain because then I would anthropomorphize. sure it may display physical reflex, but who can say the dog feels pain.  my concept of pain only comes from my human experience. ok cool.

ok cool, let's go backwards to Thomas Aquinas' school of thought.

I mentioned Treadwell because he was way off the mark...
Yeah he finally pushed it too far, sad for the girl.
The native American was talking about coexsisting with wild creatures and had it right.
The guy in the videos has similar faults.

Dog are another story but some similarities remain.

MP,
animals feel pain differently from humans, part of human pain is in the mind..
Animals I believe do have safety mechanisms.
But still pain is real for both.

The Tao of dog training...........

The Banncok Paiute Indians train their horse by becoming the
the horse in spirit. The Ving Chang practitioner is not in conflict
with his opponent but becomes one with the opponent using
the energy of his opponent to let his opponent wear himself down.

Dogs are not encumbered by very many needful things. But the
things they need are very important to them. A dog is a simple
mammalian creature. A pack animal by nature, a friend by design.

Ip Man gave the history of southern Kung Fu...that was started
by a woman who learned it from a monk.....

Perhaps it is know gone full circle with the most unlikely of
persons...What Bruce Lee struggled with and only understood
on a peripheral level was always hidden in the closest person to him.

Read the poems of Linda Lee Caldwell......find your Tao and begin to
 understand the way of all Gods Creatures.....The rest is easy.

I'm always for a philosophical discussion... This is not the middle ages, we know animals feel pain.  They used to do live autopsies on dogs and other animals to show the workings of the circulatory system, they did not believe animals felt pain.  Descartes, of "cogito, ergo sum" fame (I think, therefore I am), said animals did not feel pain, they could feel things, but it wasn't associated with the animals own self.  Like animal machines they could feel things, like a dog can wag its tail to a stimulus, but had no sense of consciousness or self.  Now we do know their nervous system is like ours and they do feel physical pain.  But the other component is emotional suffering from pain and how it relates to the self.  It is a subjective thing, but I think animals do feel suffering and emotions, and dogs feel many of the same emotions we do- loss, joy, anger, anxiety, and fear.  While dogs may have higher thresholds to pain or hide their pain as a survival instinct, even humans have different levels of tolerance- some ppl can get a tattoo and sit still while others cry.  Animals suffering due to pain pain may be even worse than humans pain, because they do not have the ability to rationalize it or see an end to it.  If I go get a procedure done that's painful, but I can say "It's for a good cause, it will be over soon, c'mon be tough!"  Animals can't do that, they live in the present, they can't talk themselves up.