Dog Leads 007 - Domestication and Dominance

Interactive Transcript

spk_0 Dr. Sophia Yen said in animal behavior, dominance is defined as a relationship between individuals

spk_0 that is established through force, aggression, and submission in order to establish priority

spk_0 access to all desired resources.

spk_0 A relationship is not established until one animal consistently differs to another.

spk_0 I could be a mess.

spk_0 Stress, trusty, yesterday.

spk_0 He don't care less.

spk_0 He sees me anyway.

spk_0 Yeah, he sees me anyway.

spk_0 My dog thinks I'm great.

spk_0 He thinks I'm number one.

spk_0 He never hates me when I'm done.

spk_0 So this episode is brought to you by Simple Solutions to Common Problems, a dog training

spk_0 guide.

spk_0 This is my second book.

spk_0 It covers the problem behaviors that I'm most often asked about in classes.

spk_0 So jumping up, chewing, biting.

spk_0 I will put a link in the description if you're interested.

spk_0 I hope you'll check it out and find your informative.

spk_0 One of my things I love studying development and in this instance, evolution of dogs and

spk_0 the behavior.

spk_0 So much so I've talked about it.

spk_0 I went back to school.

spk_0 I got my psychology degree.

spk_0 This is part of the manifestation of loving this topic so much.

spk_0 It's over simplification.

spk_0 The psychology is more about development.

spk_0 Everybody develops.

spk_0 The things that they're going through is certain stages in their life where as psychiatry,

spk_0 for example, would be more about how the individual is thinking.

spk_0 And again, that's a gross over simplification that just to give you an idea of where my

spk_0 interest lie.

spk_0 For a long time, it was my theory that dogs and wolves co-evolved.

spk_0 There was a lot of reasons for this and it had to do with scientific research and mitochondrial

spk_0 DNA and things like that.

spk_0 There was a lot of evidence to support it.

spk_0 But there was a study that came out a few years ago and we found out that dogs did evolve

spk_0 from wolves and wolves also evolved from that same ancestor.

spk_0 And it's not wolves like we think of today.

spk_0 It was one of the previous incantations, I guess, of that evolutionary step towards

spk_0 wolves that we have today and dogs.

spk_0 It's difficult to pinpoint when the first dog evolved.

spk_0 And I think one of the problems with that is scientists are always looking for, oh,

spk_0 that first dog.

spk_0 And because the situation was set up during the Pleistocene period for dogs and humans,

spk_0 or canids and humans to interact, I think there are multiple occurrences around the world.

spk_0 One of the earliest dogs that we know of from archaeological evidence was from northern Spain

spk_0 dates back to about 20,000 years ago.

spk_0 But because evolutionarily, they are so close to each other, there are a lot of similarities

spk_0 between wolves and dogs.

spk_0 When we talk about dogs being very patomorphic in relation to wolves and patomorphic just

spk_0 means they retain some of the childlike characteristics.

spk_0 So the shorter muzzles they play throughout their lives, whereas wolves generally stop

spk_0 after puppyhood.

spk_0 So they may have bred over time.

spk_0 We're going to circle back to this in just a second.

spk_0 So during the Pleistocene period, humans were hunter-gatherers.

spk_0 They were just wandering around looking for food.

spk_0 And it is likely that the wolves of that time were following the same herds.

spk_0 And so there would be some interaction, probably not breeding so much or caretaking, raising

spk_0 the dogs.

spk_0 But one of the problems with that time period is because they're moving around, the

spk_0 archaeological evidence is really contained.

spk_0 So they may, I will say, they camped in a place for the night.

spk_0 It's just a really small trash pile.

spk_0 Maybe a few artifacts that got broken and were left behind or whatever.

spk_0 Whereas once they got to the Neolithic era and they started creating villages, there's

spk_0 a lot more archaeological evidence around a smaller or a small area.

spk_0 So it's a lot easier to find this stuff.

spk_0 So it, looking at the hunter-gatherers, it's a lot harder to find information about that

spk_0 time and how they were interacting with the canids of that time.

spk_0 Once we get to the Neolithic period, people had a bit more time.

spk_0 A lot of their time was spent just surviving.

spk_0 So I'm not going to say they could breed like in the Victorian era where there was a boom

spk_0 in dog breeding.

spk_0 But they had a little more time to devote to that.

spk_0 Even if it was just sitting and waiting for the dog to approach them, giving them that

spk_0 time to do that.

spk_0 So one of the things we think is that as these villages were created and they had their

spk_0 trash piles, the dogs would come up to it.

spk_0 Another person comes out to bring the trash.

spk_0 Some of them were going to run away and not come back or avoid these humans.

spk_0 The others that have the shorter flight distance, those canids are going to be in proximity

spk_0 to each other.

spk_0 They're going to be close to each other.

spk_0 And because of that, they're probably going to breed.

spk_0 The ones that were aggressive and we're going to talk about dominance here in a minute,

spk_0 but those canids would have been killed.

spk_0 People of that era, we don't think they had the time to mess with counter-conditioning

spk_0 and that type of thing.

spk_0 They would have killed them eating them, used their fur for clothes and just been done

spk_0 with it.

spk_0 One of the things that I find really interesting when we start talking about domestication

spk_0 is the research done in Russia by Demetri Belayov who is working with foxes.

spk_0 What we've learned is as genes are changed for behaviors or a certain look, it could

spk_0 have an effect on the genes that are adjacent to that.

spk_0 So there are some other changes over time or there's possibility of changes.

spk_0 So Belayov was trying to breed a much calmer fox.

spk_0 That's the only thing that he was breeding for.

spk_0 The affiliation in a social ability.

spk_0 The researcher would walk up to the cage, put their hand by it if the fox approached.

spk_0 That was what they were looking for if the fox withdrew, then they didn't use that

spk_0 one in this experiment.

spk_0 They did the same thing with aggressive foxes but we won't get into that.

spk_0 What they found is over time, as they were breeding just for that calmness, just for that

spk_0 gregariousness, we'll say the foxes, some of them started getting floppy ears.

spk_0 Some of them started getting curly tails.

spk_0 Some of them started getting a pie-balled coat.

spk_0 Some of them started getting shorter muzzles.

spk_0 They would go into estrus twice a year instead of once a year.

spk_0 A lot of these things that we see that distinguish a dog from a wolf, we were seeing in these foxes

spk_0 that he was breeding compared to the ones that had not been selected for this research.

spk_0 So over time, because these dogs were in proximity to each other and they were interbreeding,

spk_0 we started to see probably some of these traits that we see in what we call a village dog

spk_0 where it's the tan-ish coat and the curly tail.

spk_0 About that, I think, 22 inches tall.

spk_0 They go into estrus twice a year.

spk_0 Getting to the whole dominance myth, the problem with that is pop culture is tried to

spk_0 define this in really simplistic terms and it's caused a lot of problems, particularly

spk_0 for trainers and for the dogs.

spk_0 Because you've got to dominate your dog if they go through the door first, they're being dominant.

spk_0 No, they're just better at locomotion, can get there faster.

spk_0 If the dog's on the couch, he's trying to dominate you and no, he's on the couch because it's comfortable.

spk_0 Going back to that quote from Safiya Yen, a relationship is not established until one animal

spk_0 consistently differs to another.

spk_0 What that means is we may have one dog that wants a particular resource, a tennis ball.

spk_0 The other dog doesn't care about it.

spk_0 They have deferred to the dog that wants the tennis ball.

spk_0 That relationship, that dominant relationship has been established by the deferring to the

spk_0 other dog.

spk_0 It's not the one being more aggressive and wanting it more.

spk_0 El David Meach wrote a book called the Wolf the Ethology and Behavior of an Endangered

spk_0 Species where he coined the phrase or is credited with coined the phrase, alpha wolf.

spk_0 The problem with that is almost immediately he came out and said this research is flawed.

spk_0 We need to disregard it.

spk_0 Here's what's really happening.

spk_0 One of the problems with the research was they were looking at wolves that were in captivity

spk_0 and he made the comment that by observing wolves in captivity, it's like learning about

spk_0 families by observing people in a concentration camp.

spk_0 You just can't get a realistic view of how all of that plays out.

spk_0 The actual structure of the wolf pack is a family unit.

spk_0 You have the mother and the father who are setting the rules and then you have all of

spk_0 their offspring.

spk_0 If I'm really funny, a lot of people say, oh, the lone wolf, I'm so cool and I'm a lone

spk_0 wolf.

spk_0 I'm out there by myself and making it on my own.

spk_0 What's actually happening with those lone wolves is once the males reach sexual maturity

spk_0 and some of the females, they will go off and find their own pack or form their own

spk_0 packs and become the parents of that pack of that family unit.

spk_0 It's also got to the point where wolf researchers, instead of calling them the alpha male, alpha

spk_0 female, they'll call them the mating pair, the mating male and the mating female because

spk_0 it is that family unit.

spk_0 There's no fight for dominance.

spk_0 If one of the pack or one of the family is injured, they are not going to hunt as effectively

spk_0 and the whole pack is going to suffer because of that.

spk_0 It makes no sense for them to constantly be fighting each other for dominance for hierarchy.

spk_0 Getting to dogs, what we see is one dog is scavengers.

spk_0 They will form loose transitory affiliations or basically that means they'll come together

spk_0 for a little bit and then they go their separate ways.

spk_0 Even to the point that males, once they have, let's say, insiminated a female, they're gone.

spk_0 They don't hang out and help raise the young.

spk_0 Even the female, once she has the puppies and they are weaned, she's pretty much out of

spk_0 there.

spk_0 That's the end of her duties and the dogs are left to their own to go and scavenge.

spk_0 The only time you really see dogs come together as a group is if a food resource is a really

spk_0 small and really low.

spk_0 I don't know, we'll say the village has a cleanup project and they get rid of all their

spk_0 trash and everything and there's only one small pile.

spk_0 Of course all the dogs are going to come to that area.

spk_0 The other reason would be when the females are in estrus, they're going to come and try

spk_0 and find a mate so they'll be around each other.

spk_0 So there's no cause or no reason for dominance in wolves or dogs.

spk_0 The scientific definition of dominance is priority access to a resource.

spk_0 Dr. Meach again said that dominance is not a personality trait but an aspect of a relationship

spk_0 so that goes back to what Dr. Yen said and one dog or one animal deferring to another.

spk_0 So a good example I like to use a lot of people can relate to say my wife and I would go

spk_0 out for pizza and beer.

spk_0 I love beer.

spk_0 It's one of my favorite things I love having a good beer.

spk_0 My wife loves pizza.

spk_0 She could eat it every meal and just be happy with that.

spk_0 In this scenario, if there's one beer, one pizza left, my wife is probably going to get

spk_0 the pizza not because she wants it more but because I want it less.

spk_0 I'm going to let her have that.

spk_0 Thereby making her dominant in the relationship.

spk_0 The beer on the other hand, my wife doesn't like beer.

spk_0 She's allergic to alcohol.

spk_0 Like I said, it's one of my favorite things.

spk_0 So she is going to defer to me.

spk_0 She is going to make me dominant in that context and that relationship.

spk_0 Another good example.

spk_0 Puck and Duncan, a couple of dogs that we had a while back.

spk_0 I've mentioned Duncan love tennis balls.

spk_0 It was his crack is favorite thing in the whole world.

spk_0 Puck was a terrier.

spk_0 He didn't care.

spk_0 If there was a tennis ball around, Duncan was going to get that.

spk_0 Puck might not even look at it, much less trying to get it from him.

spk_0 The other side of that is Puck being a terrier.

spk_0 He loves small furry fast moving things.

spk_0 So we would have tug toys around and he would go nuts for him.

spk_0 Duncan would play with him every once in a while with that tug toy but he never went

spk_0 and got it and played with it.

spk_0 Puck was always the one that got it and he would chew on it and play with it and come

spk_0 and ask us to play tug with him.

spk_0 Duncan was making Puck dominant in that situation.

spk_0 So it has nothing to do with a personality trait.

spk_0 It's just a desire for that resource.

spk_0 And while we're talking about this, I'm going to do another episode.

spk_0 I'm putting together the research and outlining it but just a quick mention about resource

spk_0 guarding.

spk_0 It's not a dominance thing.

spk_0 Aggression is fear of losing comfort or safety.

spk_0 So the couch that I mentioned before, that's comfortable.

spk_0 The dog likes being there.

spk_0 Has your smells on it.

spk_0 The food aggression.

spk_0 It's a Malcolm for example, the dog I have right now.

spk_0 He was a street dog for probably the first year and a half or so before we got him,

spk_0 before he went into the system of foster homes and dog rescues.

spk_0 And he's not a resource guarder but it could manifest that way with some dogs.

spk_0 If they've always had trouble getting food, they're going to guard that resource because

spk_0 they're afraid of losing it.

spk_0 They need food to survive.

spk_0 But like I said, we're going to talk about that in another episode.

spk_0 I'm still working on putting it together and be a couple of weeks hopefully.

spk_0 How all this relates to training and my training and I generally talk about this the very

spk_0 first night, just kind of get it out of the way, not this in depth.

spk_0 But when we talk about our dogs and dominance, we can't know what they're thinking.

spk_0 We can't know their motivation.

spk_0 We just have to look at the antecedent or what comes before the behavior itself and the

spk_0 consequence and then modify one of those three things to get the behavior we want.

spk_0 So it doesn't and shouldn't play into our training at all.

spk_0 There's just no reason for it.

spk_0 If you have questions about this, like I said, it's one of my favorite topics.

Dog Leads 007 - Domestication and Dominance

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