A tug-of-war continues today between dog trainers practicing predominantly positive reinforcement and those using punishment-based techniques. In the 1980s, around the same time that our understanding of wolves began to change, positive dog-training methods slowly emerged from the fringes and grew in popularity. ![]() When they mature and find a mate they are at the top.” In other words, wolves don't need to play the “alpha” game to win. “They don’t have to fight to get to the top. “In the wild it works just like it does in the human family,” says Mech. And what he’s found is far from the domineering behavior popularized by Millan. Mech has been studying wolves for 50 years now, yet only over the past decade has he gotten a clear picture of these animals in their natural habitats. But as Dave Mech, an expert on wolf behavior at the University of Minnesota, points out, the early wolf research - much of it his own - was done on animals living in captivity. ![]() He advises humans to take on this position themselves, forcefully if necessary, to keep the dog in a submissive role.ĭog trainers whose practices are grounded in these concepts, such as the late Bill Koehler and Captain Arthur Haggerty, have dominated the business for most of the past half-century. These were called “alphas.” Millan contends that a dog displaying aggression is trying to establish dominance and attain alpha status, much like its ancestors. In the 1960s, researchers observed that wolves formed large packs in which certain individuals beat out others to earn “top dog” status. Millan’s concept of dominance is based on an old understanding of the behavior of wolves.
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