Just What Is an Alpha Dog?

The term Alpha Dog seems to be a bone of contention in regards to what it refers to and it's perceived meanings.

Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and as such is often, but by no means exclusively, used in the context of number one. This could be the first to occur or the first by some other order of ranking.

In the animal world the term Alpha is often used to describe the animal that is the head, or leader of their particular group. To quote Wikipedia

"In social animals, the alpha is the individual in the community whom the others follow"

So if we talk about Canids, the pack leader is often referred to as the alpha, or top dog. If we look at a wolf society, the long held view has been that there is an alpha male and and an alpha female. That is, a male and female are the two highest ranking dogs in any pack. They are the breeders, the decision makers and have first dibs at a kill.

The wolf is a very elusive creature, and until recently quite rare in all but the most remotest wild country. As such much of the information gained from studying wolves has been from studying captive packs. This is where the problems begin.

It was often observed that the wolves in these captive packs had to establish a hierarchical order. This was done through much posturing as well as physical aggression. It often appeared to those observing, that the pack leaders were those who could assert their dominance over the others. There is plenty of literature in regard to wolf behaviour that talks about the alpha male, female or pair, being the dominant members of the pack. So in effect we had a situation where;

• Alpha was the term coined to describe the wolf pack leaders
• It was believed that the pack leaders were those who could assert their dominance over all the rivals vying for the position of pack leader.

So, what happened was the term alpha became synonymous with the idea of physically dominating your rivals, so much so, that as fashions came and went in the dog training world, when being alpha was the flavour of the month, it was literally taken to mean that you had to be dominant. Even today some people (including at least one well known TV identity) still push this barrow to varying degrees.

On the other hand we now get many people who don't accept the idea that we have to dominate our dogs, and rightly so. The problem is that they too associate the term Alpha Dog with domination and as the Alpha Dog was the leader, the idea that canine packs need an alpha or leader, is dismissed out of hand.

David Mech, one of the worlds authorities on wolves and their behaviour writes a very interesting article regarding the term Alpha in relation to wolf packs. Because of the strong association between the terms alpha and dominance, giving the false implication that the leaders of wolf pack are those that can dominate the subordinates and there is some sort of constant battle to obtain alpha status, David and others in the field prefer not to use the term alpha when talking about the pack leaders.

So even in David's mind the term Alpha refers to someone who has achieved their number one status by being the most dominant. As David explains, in a natural wild wolf pack the pack leaders are simply the parents and their position of pack leader is the natural order of parent over sibling. In a you tube video he says that we should really call the the lead wolves the breeding pair and should only call the pack leaders an alpha in those rare instances when a wolf has somehow established him or herself at the head of an already established pack.

Now I have a lot of respect for David and his study of wolf ecology and behaviour, but by taking this line he is reinforcing the idea that alpha refers to a leader that that has achieved the position through some form of competition, which I suppose in his mind it does. To me though this concept is a bastardisation of the term alpha. Perhaps we would be better served by not trying to avoid using the term alpha in relation to the pack leader, but educating people to that the wild wolf pack is normally led by the parents and made up in numbers by their offspring. That the alpha pair do not achieve the status of alpha, but are so by virtue of the natural hierarchy of parents over sibling.

Again, lets go to the Wikipedia page for alpha in biology;

"The status of the alpha is sometimes achieved by means of superior physical prowess" (emphasis added)

So only sometimes is it achieved by being physical dominant. Even if we substitute sometimes for usually, it still is not always.

Some primate species achieve alpha status by use of political alliances, sometimes it happens through the organic nature of parent sibling hierarchy. It really is just a generic term for describing the leader and should not be seen as an indictment of how that leadership status was achieved. .

Why am I even bothering with this line of argument? After all whats in a word? Is it an attempt to justify my business and website name? To a certain degree yes. When I came up with the name it was never meant to to insinuate "He who can dominate over his rivals", but as reference to being number one, or more importantly leader. (It also gets you listed near the top in the Yellow Pages, or any other alphabetically ordered listing. ) I was not aware of how heavily tied, in many people's mind, the term Alpha Dog was with the idea of winning some sort of battle for dominance at that time.

There is though, a more important, and less selfish reason.

As already discussed, the term Alpha Dog is, in many people's minds, associated with winning some sort of competition for dominance. An Alpha Dog is though, by whatever definition you use, the pack leader. As I mentioned earlier many people reject the notion of having to dominate their dogs. Many of people therefore reject the notion of the need for an Alpha Dog and unfortunately, therefore of a leader. This though, is a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Consider this article, Forget About Being Alpha In Your Pack, by Kathy Sdao.

In this article Kathy talks about how the the long held view of the alpha dog in the wolf pack is based upon observations of captive wolves and therefore misplaced. (as already discussed) She even refers to David Mech in regards to this.

She has either not fully read or not understood Davids article on this subject. We will quickly go over this again. The leaders of a wolf pack do not get that position by defeating their rivals in some sort of battle for supremacy, but are merely a breeding pair and the pack is made up mainly off their offspring. To quote David.

"Labeling a high-ranking wolf alpha emphasizes its rank in a dominance hierarchy.
However, in natural wolf packs, the alpha male or female are merely the breeding animals, the parents of the pack, and dominance contests with other wolves are rare, if at all"

Somehow, from this sort of information Kathy has construed that wolf packs don't have a hierarchy. Furthermore, she decrees, that domestic dogs will not form packs and do not need a leader figure.

First of all Kathy seems to acknowledge that in the captive situation wolves do form a hierarchy;

"It turns out this common assumption about the social dynamics of wolves is based on studies of captive animals whose group structure was non-natural"

Note that she doesn't say wolves don't form hierarchies just that they rarely do in natural settings. This we acknowledge. Later, though, she even states that wolves;

"..organize themselves into family units". This is either a very poor grammatical mistake on her behalf or she just doesn't fully understand what David Mech is saying on this subject. You don't organise yourself into family units, family units have a natural hierarchy - from parents down. That is the natural order of a wild wolf pack

Unless I'm misunderstanding the message from this article, Kathy seems to be saying that domestic dogs are not pack animals and do not need a pack leader.

"..we can aspire not to be dominant pack leaders, but good “parents” instead, that is, excellent care-takers and teachers of our dependent dogs."

If she had used the term leader instead of parents I wouldn't have an issue with this statement at all. Again, perhaps it's just a grammatical issue here, but I don't think so. The context of the whole article seems to be against the notion that dogs form packs and therefore need a pack leader.

I do agree that we don't have to be dominant pack leaders, but we do need to be effective leaders. After all a good parent is a good leader, a good care-taker is a good leader and a good teacher is a good leader. To be all of these things to our dogs we need to be a leader to our dogs.

As tempting as it is to continue dissecting Kathy's article, I think (hope) that I have made the point about not rejecting the notion that dogs need a pack leader, just because pack leader is associated with Alpha Dog, and Alpha Dog is associated with winning some sort of dominance battle.

All wolf packs have at least one leader, yet when world class authorities are heard to say that natural wolf packs do not have an alpha, some will twist or misunderstand this to mean they don't have a leader.

This is the main reason why I would prefer the continued use of the term Alpha, with education that this does not refer to the victor of a battle for dominance, but merely a term to describe the pack leaders. I don't believe that it is necessary for those in the scientific community to change their terminology, just better education of what it actually means.

In this context,

Alpha = No 1.

No more, no less.

Natural or unnatural?

Let's go back to David Mech for a moment. Although I don't agree with his interpretation of the word Alpha and it's use, this is a linguistic issue only. When he talks about wolves, only a fool would not listen to what he has to say.

In his youtube video he says;

"..in an artificial pack.....they would form a pecking order or a dominance hierarchy"

So in the absence of the natural parent/sibling hierarchy, wolves and therefore dogs, will establish a hierarchy. It may not be truly lineal, as those lower down the order may sometimes sit on equal footing, but there will be distinguishable leaders. (If you doubt that domestic dogs form packs, then do some research into dog's forming packs in the aftermath of Cyclone Katrina in New Orleans.)

Is then, our situation with domestic dogs more like a natural wolf pack with parents leading their siblings, or the unnatural pack with unrelated older dogs being thrown together?

The answer is actually a little bit of both. If you take young puppy home to raise and care for it then that is similar to the natural wolf pack. The difference of course is that our dogs don't leave home at sexual maturity, which pushes us back into the unnatural pack situation. If you take home, say an adult rescue dog, then that is more similar to the unnatural pack environment alluded to previously.

It really doesn't matter though. The point is dogs need a pack leader, just as nearly every other social mammal does. Just as importantly, regardless of how they achieve the status, an Alpha Dogs constantly reinforces their status with body language and behaviour.Without a defined leader the social system just doesn't function properly.

While aggression may be  part of establishing hierarchy in the unnatural pack, there is also much body language and posturing. In both the wild wolf pack and the unnatural wolf pack, there is constant reinforcing of the organic hierarchy using body language and posturing. This actually serves  to avoid aggressive confrontations. These are uniform signals that all of the Canis Lupus species instinctively understand. The important point here, is that leadership can be established and maintained without aggression, but can not be established and maintained without giving off the correct signals via body language and behaviour.

If us humans give the wrong signals to our dogs and fail to give the correct signals, we will in fact be saying to them, "Hey, I see you as higher than me" . We will actually, inadvertently, be thrusting the role of pack leader upon them. This is when many behavioural issues start to develop. If from the start we give the correct signals only, then our dogs will always view us as leaders,. If we have been giving our dogs the wrong signals, but then start to give the correct signals we can re establish ourselves as pack leaders or alphas in their eyes. We can then show our dogs what is expected of them and they will do so out of respect. Whether we just want a happy calm relaxed dog or want to train them to the highest level in any given field, becoming pack leader, or alpha, will give a strong foundation to achieve this. This is where Amichien Bonding comes in.

Amichien bonding allows us to convey status of pack leader, or alpha, in a way our dogs instinctively understand, without having to "..recognize, let alone replicate, the elegant subtleties of canine body language". This 'travellers phrase book' of canine communication helps us achieve leadership, or alpha status, without the need for aggression or physically dominating our dogs. It is a non confrontational method that truly works if implemented correctly. Some in the field of "training" may feel threatened by this as it appears to undermine their beliefs. Incorrect application of the concept of Alpha Dog may give these people ammunition to attempt to discredit it,or even justify their own views, but to me the proof is in the pudding. I constantly see the benefits of applying AB, whether with colleagues, clients I have helped or simply everyday with my own dogs.

Alistair wise

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