Dog Trainer Elizabeth Bay – Book Today – Pack Theory Debunked

Eazy Dog Training – Your Dog Trainer in Elizabeth Bay

Do you really need to be the ‘Pack Leader’ to your dog?

It’s a very common belief that we need to be a pack leader to our dogs. Sometimes people even blame lack of pack leadership for bad behaviours. But is it true though? First of all your dogs know perfectly well that you are not a dog. So the whole concept of being a pack leader gets a bit confusing. Here’s advice from a dog trainer in Elizabeth Bay.

The History of Pack Theory
The concept of dominance and pack theory in the canine world is largely based on research collected from studies performed on a pack of unrelated, captive wolves in the 1970s. The results of this research suggested that there was a rigid hierarchy in the pack of wolves. The leaders, ‘Alphas’, had priority access to resources, forcefully maintaining the group structure through displays of aggression to others.

It was then assumed that similar social groupings and violent ‘pack’ dynamics must exist among domestic dogs as well. And the formation of these dog packs was supposedly based on the desire and drive of certain dogs to be the alpha dog of the group.

This theory became very popular despite the fact that dogs and wolves are separated by thousands of years of evolution. And despite the facts that dogs and humans are completely different species. The pack theory was attributed to explain not only the social interactions between dogs, but also between people and dogs and how dogs should be trained.

However, dogs are not wolves. And even if they were, those captive wolf studies have since been renounced by the very scientists who performed them and drew their original conclusions.

What is a True ‘Pack’?
Current scientific research has concluded that in the wild a true natural pack is actually composed of parents and their offspring. This type of pack survives like a human family, in which the parents take the leadership roles and the children follow.

The original study on wolves kept in captivity was skewed by the observation of subjects that were under severe stress. The wolves were forced to live as captives with other unrelated wolves in an unnatural environment, unable to behave as they normally would in a natural familial pack.In fact, these researchers were observing a dysfunctional group of wolves that were using threat and deference displays in order to seek safety and survive within their unnatural captive group.