For and against the Pack Theory

Galway K9

Hi Guys,

I would love to open up an open, educated discussion, on whether Pack theory is still applicable, disproved, outdated or nonsense.

Please provide example, or references for your arguments? Its a puzzler for me, and i am looking to brush up again.

Just to get the ball rolling:

I know loads for and against it but ill start with this, old school one.

I think the best definition i've heard on what dominance is was from Patricia McConnell, Ph.D..she states that dominance is priority access to the resources in your territory. High ranking animals eat first (used by Dog Listeners, Amichien bonding), are the first ones in and out of a given territory, and in many packs alpha male and female are allowed to breed. Nowhere is there any mention of high ranking animals physically dominating others. --- Its old i know.

fatmammycat

Oh interesting topic!
Pack theory is a strange one. Studies are starting to show that feral dogs form loose bonds- if at all- and separate easily.
Raymond and Lorna Coppinger's book- 'Dogs, A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behaviour and Evolution' suggest domestic dogs behave very differently from their wild cousins ( they studied village dogs from the island Pemba, owned by no one, frequently scavengers). They observed feral dogs often stayed well away from each other unless in very small family units, and even they they would seperate if say a human family started to feed one of them.
If you think about it dog packs don't have the complicated social scruture of a wolf pack (wolf packs are usually a family, so much so that 'Alpha' is no longer used in some studies and 'breeder pair' is). So it's hard to how 'pack theory' would apply to dogs, surely disputes would be more about resources, territorial boundries and food? No?

A lot of our training of dogs is mangled by pack and Alpha clap-trap: eating first, going through doors first, rolling frightened dogs, all that weird guff. We're not raising wolves, indeed most of us wouldn't even know where to start with a 10 week old wolf pup, let along an adult weighing between 40 -50 kilos. Wolves are not domesticated, they do not seek us out as dogs do, they are not interested in goof balling around with us, they would rather be as far away from us as possible. It's why hybrids with high wolf content invariable end up in rescues, because a creature with a foot in both worlds in a anxious dangerous mess.

DBB

There's nothing any better or worse about McConnell's definition of what dominance is than any other definition of it, tbh. Dominance hierarchies exist in nature, that's a fact.
But the question you're asking is, does it apply to dogs? Or indeed, wolves?

It's been done to death in this forum, which makes me not want to talk too much about it here. Suffice to say, a Google search, and a Google scholar search, reveals no research or empirical evidence to support to existence of a dominance hierarchy in dogs, and even in wolves to a very large extent. There is, however, a swathe of research papers and articles written by people who are trained in behavioural science, and consequent articles written by professionals in the field of applied behaviour, which support the theory that the definition of dominance hierarchies/pack leadership etc does not apply to dogs.
What can and does happen, is that within individual relationships, dogs form two-way relationships with each other, just as humans do... So you get a group of dogs in a multi-dog household, and some are more extrovert, they're "go-getters", they're pushy. These individuals are more likely to get their way than a shyer, less pushy individual. But these are qualities of individual relationships, and are not guided by an over-riding hierarchy which us forcing order on the dog group.
An article which explains this, which I found readily on a Google scholar search:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1558787808001159

This article was written by, amongst others, John Bradshaw, author of "In Defense of Dogs", which is a lovely book for the average dog owner or trainer to read, because it helps bring it all together.

Personally, as a scientist, I am not particularly willing to go along with anecdotal tales from people who see what they want to see. I want evidence. And I want that evidence to stand up in the face of scrutiny.
So, I'd invite you to carry out the same Google search that I just did: "dog pack theory", and see what you come up with.
Also, the website that gathers all into one place, with relevant references:
http://www.dogwelfarecampaign.org

The above site, it must be noted, is older, and does not include some more up-to-date research which, in any case, further supports the points they make.
It must also be noted that the information on the website is supported by all of the seriously respected, transparent, evidence-based dog trainers' and dog behaviourists' associations, and all of the big, respected dog welfare and rescue organisations.

In summary, I can find no research to support "pack theory" in dogs. Neither, it seems, can any of the behavioural scientists. Maybe it's out there, but for some reason they're not publishing it.... Unlikely, I think!

TooManyDogs

DBB wrote: »

In summary, I can find no research to support "pack theory" in dogs. Neither, it seems, can any of the behavioural scientists. Maybe it's out there, but for some reason they're not publishing it.... Unlikely, I think!

This is a subject that interests me greatly, both as a scientist and as an owner of 6 dogs. I too can find no evidence of studies of domestic dog 'pack' dynamics, I say 'pack' as a collective term rather than comparative to a wolf pack. I doubt there is any incentive for scientists to study domestic dogs and certainly no funding for such studies, and I would imagine this is why there is no real evidence beyond dated Pack Theory doesn't apply to wolves never mind to dogs, and the familial wolf dynamics don't apply to dogs either. Do there's a lot of what doesn't apply and little study done into what does apply.

I'm fascinated daily watching my dogs and their dynamics, they are 6 non related dogs, 5 adopted over the age of 16 weeks and one at the age of 3 days and that's the interesting one, how he behaves in relation to the other 5 and they to him. 1 dogs definitely appears to very quietly demand the most respect, can stop rows with a single look, demand resources and gets them, instigates play with the others but rarely the other way around. A different dog appears to take the Peacemaker role. But again, all only anecdotal but I would love to see studies to find out how much is conjecture and how much fact.

Temple Grandin likened groups of related dogs as having flowing familial bonds, 'position' is easily understood, and non-related groups of dogs as being more like a business company, where 'position' is more valuable and more jealously guarded, that you'll have the company climbers wanting more power and the ones happy to run in their groove. Again she cited lack of evidence to back up any theory of what does actually happen by way of structure within dog groups, but I think its a very interesting theory.

DBB

TooManyDogs wrote: »

I doubt there is any incentive for scientists to study domestic dogs and certainly no funding for such studies, and I would imagine this is why there is no real evidence beyond dated Pack Theory doesn't apply to wolves never mind to dogs, and the familial wolf dynamics don't apply to dogs either. Do there's a lot of what doesn't apply and little study done into what does apply.

There's a fair incentive as it happens, because in the past 20 yrs or so particularly, the domestic dog has been identified as a useful analogue for human behaviour, and in the process have become an intensively studied species in their own right.
There are research labs in Hungary, Italy, Austria, Germany, the UK, and America dedicated to trying to figure out what's going on with dogs, and indeed many of them have moved on from the whole pack theory argument, I suspect because to some extent, they feel the questions have been answered.
John Bradshaw and his team are possibly the main big name in recent times looking into it, but Adam Miklosi and co of the Family Dog Project have also tested inter-dog relationships... Almost all of their research is freely available from their research page on their website:
http://familydogproject.elte.hu/publications.html

1 dogs definitely appears to very quietly demand the most respect, can stop rows with a single look, demand resources and gets them, instigates play with the others but rarely the other way around.

As I said above, we all know people like this too, but we don't attempt to explain the human form in terms of a dominance hierarchy model. Again, if you look up Bradshaw's work (I linked to a paper above) you'll find a more likely explanation for what's really going on. Just because humans and dogs have "dominant"/domineering individuals does not mean there's a hierarchy driving the resultant behaviours. Indeed, there's a pretty big argument that naturally confident dogs learn to act in a domineering way, because repeated successes reward that sort of behaviour. Similarly, shy, "submissive" dogs learn to increase their appeasing behaviours because they learn that these behaviours keep them out of trouble, most of the time at least.

Temple Grandin likened groups of related dogs as having flowing familial bonds, 'position' is easily understood, and non-related groups of dogs as being more like a business company, where 'position' is more valuable and more jealously guarded, that you'll have the company climbers wanting more power and the ones happy to run in their groove. Again she cited lack of evidence to back up any theory of what does actually happen by way of structure within dog groups, but I think its a very interesting theory.

I'm a big fan of Temple Grandin, I like the Big Picture she presents, and the ethos she generates. However, and I'm not alone in saying this, whilst she is top-class when it comes particularly to cattle, and other livestock, her doggy knowledge is... Not so good. Her livestock writings are based on her own personal knowledge and research, but the dog and cat stuff is not... At all. She's not a "dog person"! A lot of what she has written about them (dogs), certainly in her books that I've read, was based on old information, and popular anecdotal information. A lot of her writing came before the research really came of age. I think, were she to re-research a lot of what she said about dogs in her books, and she was to publish 2nd editions, we'd find the content would now be very different!

TooManyDogs

DBB wrote: »

http://familydogproject.elte.hu/publications.html

Weekend reading sorted for me then

Galway K9

Wow, alot of evidence seems to contradict McConnell and my old favourite Stanley Corens arguments. I can understand how the behaviour can be confused as pack structure. Ive also looked at and bookmarked all the links above. Great stuff here, thanks for the efforts, i know it can be a pain explaining and elaborating this continually with every thread that's opened up.

DBB

Just to clarify, there's nowt wrong with that definition if Patricia McConnell's, because it describes a dominance hierarchy. But I'm pretty sure she's not saying here that it applies to dogs. In fact, I'm sure McConnell doesn't subscribe to it for dogs at all. She may have once, as everyone did, but not now.
I can't comment on Coren because anything I have written by him is prety old, he may not feel the same now.
Now that I think of it, another really good book which explains it all, and it's not a new book either, is Jean Donaldson's "The Culture Clash", the first edition of which was published in the mid 90's!