The Crushing Grip of “Dominance”

The remote is on the floor but my hands are clenched too tight to pick it up. On the screen, a man in a tactical vest is shouting. He pins a growling shepherd mix to the ground, one hand clamped over its neck, and holds it there until the dog goes limp. The narrator’s voice booms about establishing dominance, about being the pack leader. A sick, metallic heat rises in my throat. It’s the feeling of watching something that is both brutally effective and fundamentally wrong. The dog has stopped growling. The man stands up, dusts off his knees, and declares victory. But the dog’s eyes, fixed on a space beyond the camera, tell a different story. It’s not respect. It’s resignation.

I’ve seen that episode at least 7 times. Maybe more. I used to condemn it, loudly, to anyone who would listen. I’d talk about the flawed science, about how the entire dominance theory was based on a misunderstanding of captive, unrelated wolves in a study from 1947. The researcher himself, David Mech, spent decades trying to correct the record, explaining that wild wolf packs function like human families, with parents guiding their offspring, not with alphas fighting for rank. I’d explain that our dogs aren’t wolves in a constant struggle for power. They are a different species, co-evolved with us for 37,000 years to be our partners. And yet. I have a confession to make. In a moment of sheer desperation with my own frantic, barking rescue, I did it. Not the pin, not the shout. But I stood over him, puffed out my chest, and gave him my best ‘alpha’ stare when he guarded a stolen sock. I felt ridiculous. He just looked confused, then he swallowed the sock. My victory felt as hollow as the one on the TV.

The Allure of the Alpha Lie

It’s an alluring lie because it’s simple. It offers a flowchart for a relationship that has no flowchart. If dog does X, you do Y to reassert dominance. Problem solved. It taps into a very human desire for control, for a predictable world where our authority is absolute and unquestioned. But a relationship built on dominance isn’t a relationship at all; it’s a cold, one-sided power dynamic. The silence it produces is mistaken for respect, and the compliance is mistaken for loyalty.

I think a lot about my pens. This morning I went through a cup of them, testing each one on a piece of scrap paper. Some were smooth and left a bold, confident line. Others were scratchy, promising ink but delivering only a faint, frustrating gray. The worst ones left a deep indentation on the paper, a mark of effort with no result. That’s what dominance training feels like. It presses hard, it leaves a mark, but the actual communication, the dark ink of understanding, is missing. It’s a scar without a story.

The Calm Presence of June and Walter

I didn’t truly understand the alternative until I met June S. She was the volunteer coordinator at a hospice, a woman with a stillness that was magnetic. Her job was to navigate the most delicate emotional spaces a person can occupy, and she did it not with authority, but with presence. Her partner in this was a 7-year-old golden retriever mix named Walter, a dog with the calmest eyes I’ve ever seen. I watched them for months during my own volunteer shifts. There was no ‘pack leader’ dynamic. There was no dominance. There was only a quiet, constant conversation.

June never gave Walter a command. Not in the way we think of it. She’d murmur, “Walter, are you ready?” before they entered a patient’s room. She would place a hand gently on his side to guide him closer to a waiting hand. I saw him once get spooked by a loud cart in the hallway-a sound that would have sent my dog into a barking fit for 17 minutes. Walter startled, flattened his ears, and looked right at June. She didn’t say “No,” or “Leave it.” She just knelt down, exhaled slowly, and murmured, “That was a big sound, wasn’t it?” Walter watched her breathe. He took a breath himself. And then he shook his whole body, a classic stress release, and leaned against her leg. She hadn’t dominated his fear; she had acknowledged it and shown him the way out.

Unlearning the Ego: A Costly Lesson

Her entire philosophy, she later told me, came from a mistake with a previous dog. She’d followed the popular advice. She ate before her dog ate. She went through doors first. She used a prong collar for leash-pulling because a trainer with 27 years of experience told her it mimicked a mother dog’s correction. She said the dog obeyed, yes, but something in his eyes had dimmed. He stopped offering behaviors. He stopped asking to play. He just waited. Waited to be told what to do, and waited to be corrected if he did it wrong.

Learning to build that kind of partnership, the kind June had with Walter, means unlearning a lifetime of cultural programming that tells us leadership has to look like a clenched fist. It requires learning to read the subtle signals our dogs are sending us every second of every day-the ear flick, the lip lick, the whale eye. It requires us to be the safe space, not the scary one. This isn’t knowledge we’re born with; it’s a skill. And like any skill, it benefits immensely from clear, compassionate guidance. Finding effective, science-based dog training classes can be the difference between a relationship based on force and one built on a foundation of mutual trust and communication.

The Real Language of Dogs: A Call for Empathy

For 47 years, the alpha myth has been poisoning our relationships with the animals who share our homes. It’s a compelling narrative, full of drama and power. It has sold millions of books and launched countless television careers. But its legacy is one of fear, anxiety, and misunderstanding. It has taught a generation of dog owners to see a complex emotional being as a rival to be subdued. It mistakes a cry for help-growling, barking, lunging-as an act of rebellion.

We see it in the dog parks. The owner who yanks their dog’s leash so hard the dog gags. The person who proudly says, “I just give him a little tap to show him who’s boss.” They aren’t bad people. They are people who have been sold a bad idea, a shortcut that leads to a dead end. They’ve been told that kindness is weakness and that empathy is appeasement. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to admit that the methods you’ve been using, the ones that seem to work on the surface, are actually just chipping away at the foundation of your dog’s trust in you.

Partnership Built on Love, Not Fear

June and Walter showed me a different way. Theirs was a partnership of equals, though their roles were different. She was the guide, the one who knew how to navigate the human world. He was the emotional expert, the one who could sense a person’s need for a warm head in their lap before the person knew it themselves. She didn’t need to be his alpha. She needed to be his trusted interpreter, his advocate, and his safe harbor. In return, he gave her not grudging compliance, but joyful, willing cooperation. He followed her not because he was afraid of what would happen if he didn’t, but because he trusted, completely, that she would always lead him toward goodness. That’s not leadership. It’s love.