Renee Rhoades, MSc: Your Dog Behaviorist

The dominance theory traces back to Schenkel (1947), who observed captive, unrelated wolves confined in a zoo and concluded that wolves compete aggressively for rank, with a dominant "alpha" pair holding control.

Those observations were then extrapolated directly to domestic dogs.

The critical flaw: the behavior Schenkel recorded was an artifact of captivity, not a picture of how wolves or dogs actually organize themselves in natural conditions.

By 1999, L. David Mech, whose own widely circulated book had popularized the alpha concept, published a formal correction in the Canadian Journal of Zoology.

Based on 13 summers of observations of free-living wolves, Mech concluded that the typical wolf pack is a family, with adult parents guiding group activities through a division-of-labor system, not through dominance contests.

He has since repeatedly asked that the original work be taken out of print.

In addition, dogs are not wolves, they are their own species.

The downstream consequences of applying this framework to dogs have left a rippling effect we are still feeling today.

It doesn't always look loud... and it is sitting in plain sight now being presented with the label of "rehabilitation". "leadership", "dog psychology", and of to add more insult to the methods being used on the dogs... "kindness".

Forcing dogs to endure things: our touch, our closeness, our boundaries, our made up rules and then packinging it up as kindness is probably one of the most horrible things we do to dogs.

But its not your fault. This is just what you have been told (and sold).

The dog who bites just needs to get used to human touch. Whether he likes it or not.

The gloves and slip leash protect the human from injury.

The dog is the one to blame.

What your dog is doing when they react, resist, or struggle is communicating, not scheming. Behavior is shaped by learning history, emotional state, and environment. When we understand that, everything changes.

Schenkel, R. (1947). Expression studies on wolves. Behaviour, 1, 81-129

Mech, L.D. (1999). Alpha status, dominance, and division of labor in wolf packs. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 77, 1196-1203

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"He needs more socialization."

It's one of the most common pieces of advice given to guardians of reactive dogs. And on the surface, it sounds completely logical.

But here's the thing. When most people hear "socialization," they picture exposure. Getting the dog out there. Around the triggers.

Flooding until they "get used to it"

That's not true socialization.

In behavioral science, socialization refers to the process of building positive, low-stress associations with the world during a dog's critical developmental window. It's about quality of experience, not quantity of exposure. It's about safety, not saturation.

That distinction matters.

And for one of my clients, learning that changed everything.

She came to me after months of following her previous trainer's advice. Dog parks. Doggy daycare. Group classes. She had done it all.

And her dog, Charlie, wasn't reacting anymore - but when she would take him out alone he would lose it.

Lunging at every dog they passed. Barking. Pulling. She couldn't understand why he seemed "fine" in group settings but not when they were one on one.

Here's what was actually happening:

In high-density dog environments, Charlie had learned to suppress. When a dog is surrounded by threats the brain goes into survival mode.

It looks like calm. It isn't.

That's not confidence growing, it's self preservation masked of good behavior.

When she came to me, the first thing we did was stop the exposure overwhelm.

We pulled everything back - and after 2 weeks we started to see a huge shift.

Charlie's reactivity on walks reduced dramatically.

His resilience was taking form.

This is when we started his real therapy. When his brain could finally learn that the world wasn't overwhelming.

After 3 months of treatment Charlie is "like a different dog" and his guardian knows now that socialization isn't what Charlie needed.

He needed to know he was safe.

I happened to see a comment the other day where someone said my dogs were "bad" because they didn't do something immediately after I asked them - and because my dogs were bad I should be ashamed to call myself a dog professional.

My dogs are happy, as healthy as they can be, and I'm proud to say that they don't always do things because I tell them to.

Every single thing that my dogs did this week, the things that others would consider "bad behavior"... I laughed about!

Bad is a human label, dependent on an individual's value system.

My value system for life with my dogs is that they trust me, they feel safe with me, and they have as good of a time as I can provide for them.

And really do any of these things really even matter?!

While others might see a "bad" dog I just see a dog who isn't afraid to be themselves.

And that's something I'm not ever going to be ashamed of!

Would you like this to be a weekly series? (Sharing what the boys have been up to?) Let me know! 👇🏼

Most of us grew up learning the same things about dogs.

They need to be socialized with everything.

They should be okay with being handled by anyone.

A "good" dog tolerates the vet, the groomer, the child who grabs their face, the stranger who reaches over to touch them unexpectedly.

And if they can't, that's something that needs to be fixed in them.

That they are the problem.

It makes sense that we believed this.

It's what we were told by people we trusted as experts.

And most of us followed that advice because we genuinely wanted to do right by our dogs.

But here's what nobody mentioned:

Dogs experience the world through a sensory system so different from ours that what feels like a simple interaction to us can feel like an overwhelming event to them.

A hand coming over their head from a stranger isn't always welcome.

A room full of unfamiliar dogs isn't always a party.

Being restrained by someone they've never met while their body is manipulated isn't something any animal is designed to just be fine with.

As a society we've been told to build our expectations around what dogs should tolerate based on what's convenient for us, not on what's fair to them.

Sometimes we are fueled by shame too.

Embarrassed that our dog's behavior is a reflection of us.

We don't have enough control over our dogs or that we have done something wrong to cause this.

And when a dog tells us it's too much, through avoidance, through tension, through a growl, we've been taught to see that as a flaw in the dog rather than feedback worth listening to.

Your dog doesn't have to love everyone.

They don't have to be okay with everything.

And letting go of that expectation isn't lowering the bar.

It's finally setting one that respects who they actually are.

💌 Share this if you're learning to listen differently to your dog.