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[Prey Model Raw]

What is Aggression and Dominance?

Sarah Kalnajs and my personal notes

 

What is Aggression:

 

* The most accurate definition I have found:

 

“Adaptive effort to establish control over some vital resource or situation that cannot be effectively controlled through other means….An active and purposeful effort aimed at obtaining various ends through the assertion of threats or attacks.” 

 

Steven R. Lindsay, Handbook Of Applied Dog Behavior and Training.

 

*Never punish communication. If a dog is communicating and is punished for doing so, eventually the dog will learn not to communicate. This will resort to the next level of communication, which can have devastating results. If a dog is trained that growling is bad to communicate to a child that he doesn’t want the child crawling all over him, the dog may resort to the next level which is nipping or biting. This is not a good or ideal situation. Let dogs communicate with other dogs and people the way they know how. 

 

*Aggression can stem from many different places and reasons and is usually a very complex behavior problem.

 

What is Dominance?

 

*Relationship between two or more individuals, not a personality trait.

 

*Not a bad personality trait, even though it has negative connotations associated with it.

 

*Leadership does NOT equal dominance rather compliance leads to rewards

 

*David Mech came up with Dominance theory about wolves, which cannot be thrown out completely but rather modified.

 

*Alpha is a fluid state, depends on who holds the resources.