What is a dominant dog?
Some people attribute all problem behaviors to “dominance“, while others do not want to use the “dominant dog” label at all. The truth, as always, is somewhere in-between.
It is useful to recognize dominant behaviors in our dog, so that we can better manage him, keep him safe, and set him up for success. Refusing to use the word dominance, or denying its existence in dogs, is unhelpful.
Any pack animal including humans and dogs, have to deal with dominance issues, because it is part of pack dynamics.
Similarly, trying to explain everything away by using the dominant dog label or excuse, is also unhelpful. To really fix a problem behavior, we want to fully understand it, and correctly identify its source. For example, a dog may show aggression because of dominance. However, dog aggression can also be the result of fear, stress, play, curiosity, boredom, or something else.
Dog Dominance
Dominance is a fluid concept.
Dogs are not dominant all of the time.
For example, many dogs will show greater dominance when they are on home turf, or when their owners are around. Under different circumstances, these same dogs may become less assertive, or may even become submissive.
Observe our dog carefully, and identify when he is more likely to show dominance, and why.
Dominance is a relative concept.
My Shiba Inu, for example, is more dominant than most dogs I have owned. He challenges me more frequently, and is constantly testing his boundaries. He has a dominant body posture, and he will not back down when challenged by other dogs.
My Siberian Husky, is a more submissive dog. She usually stops whatever she is doing, when I tell her to. She very quickly backs down, and uses submissive body language, when confronted by other dogs.
However, this does not mean that my Husky will always back down, or never show any dominance behavior. She simply prefers to avoid conflict, and has learned that she usually gets more, by seeking a peaceful resolution. I make sure to encourage this behavior, by rewarding calmness and conflict avoidance very well.
What is a Dominant Dog?
- A dominant dog will likely respond with aggression when he is frustrated, or when he feels threatened. He may also redirect that aggression onto us, if we try to physically engage him.
- A dominant dog is more forceful when it comes to fulfilling his own needs and goals. He is not afraid to challenge those around him, and to continually test his boundaries. My Shiba Inu is always testing to see if particular rules, such as the no getting on furniture rule, still hold true.
- A dominant dog is more likely to fight, and less likely to submit or run away. My Shiba Inu likes playing with other dogs, but he generally does not get along with dogs who try to dominate him. If challenged, he will not back down, and this can result in a dog fight.
Dealing with a Dominant Dog
1. Calm and decisive pack leader
Being angry and shouting at our dog, will only worsen his behavior. Fear and uncertainty will increase his level of stress, and cause him to behave in a more erratic fashion.
The best way to deal with a dominant dog is to remain calm, and firmly remove him from the environment or object, that is causing him to act out.
2. Avoid physical corrections
Contrary to common belief, physical force or physical corrections is NOT a good way to deal with dominant dogs. If not perfectly executed (with perfect timing, force, and technique), a physical correction may further frustrate our dog, and cause him to get more aggressive.
Instead, stay calm, keep physical interactions to a minimum, and quickly leave the stressful situation. In addition, using physical force against a dog, may end up teaching him the wrong lesson; in particular, use violence against violence.
True alpha dogs lead by controlling the pack’s resources. We can control our dog’s resources by following the NILIF (Nothing in Life is Free) program, and using reward obedience training.
3. Management and supervision
We want to step in and stop any aggressive behaviors, before our dog escalates and loses control. Prevention is key when dealing with a dominant dog. It stops him from practicing aggressive behaviors, and it enforces the important lesson that we are calm and in charge.
4. Consistent rules
To become a good pack leader, it is important to develop a set of house rules and some structure, for our dog to follow. Always be consistent with enforcing all of those rules.
My Shiba Inu’s most important house rules include –
- No getting on furniture,
- No biting on people,
- No leash biting, and
- No food aggression or resource guarding.
5. Frequent obedience training sessions
Schedule at least two or more short (10 – 15 minutes) obedience training sessions with our dog, every day. It is a good idea to keep up with obedience exercises, throughout a dog’s life. This keeps him mentally sharp, and makes it clear that we are in charge.
6. Use proper equipment to control our dog
When dealing with aggression, safety should always be a primary concern.
Use whatever equipment is necessary, to keep all the people around our dominant dog safe. A drag lead may also be useful because it gives us good control of our dog, without having to lay hands on him or his collar, and without resorting to chasing games.
If our dog has a bite history, it may be necessary to use a muzzle. I like the basket muzzle because it does not overly constrain a dog’s mouth, and is more comfortable. A basket muzzle will still allow a dog to eat and pant.
Be careful not to aggravate our dog’s aggressive behavior by overly constraining him, and causing barrier frustration. When in doubt, consult a professional trainer.
7. Set our dog up for success
Try to minimize the number of dominant displays. Identify objects (e.g. other dogs, cats) and environmental conditions (e.g. loud noise) that trigger dominant behaviors, and avoid those triggers.
Then, gradually desensitize our dog to those events, in a controlled fashion.
Many dog behavioral issues, including resource guarding, biting people, dog-to-dog aggression, sensitivity to handling, growling at humans, and general disobedience, are often attributed to “the dominant dog”.
However, each of these problems are unique, and complex. They are usually the result of many factors, one of which may be dominance. In fact, many behavioral issues are the result of stress and fear, and have nothing whatsoever to do with dominance.
When dealing with dog behavioral issues, it is best to keep an open mind.
Observe our dog and his environment carefully. Identify the triggers for his aggressive behavior, and try to understand why he is responding in this way. If his aggression is extreme (e.g. he is breaking skin, and/or causing puncture wounds), hire a professional trainer to help us carefully trouble-shoot the problems.
We keep a drag leash on him at all times too. That definitely helps keep him under control when he acts up. We’ve been diligent about correcting him and not letting him control us, but he still occasionally bites at our feet. I think it will just take some time on our part to break him of this.
Also, he marked for the first time at a friend’s house that has dogs. he’s never ever gone in our house before. is this part of his dominant dog behavior? and how do you stop it!
Thank you for this site. It’s nice to know that it’s not just me.
Hmmm – it is difficult to tell. It will depend on whether he showed other signs of dominance. For example, how did he act with your friend’s dogs?
If the pee-ing is the only thing, then it could just be a matter of smell. Maybe that was an area that your friend’s dogs have gone before, or which particularly smells like them, which will be very tempting for another dog to want to leave their own scent. Dogs have a very strong instinct to pee where other dogs have peed before. Kindda like leaving their calling card.
When Sephy is at the training facility (in a daycare center) the first thing he will do is usually go around and explore everything in the environment, then sometimes he will mark a bit here and there where it strongly smells like other dogs. I think it is normal canine behavior.
In terms of stopping it – you would pretty much do the same thing as you would with potty training in your own house. Dogs don’t usually generalize across different locations, so while Shiba may have learned potty rules in your house, he does not understand that the same rules apply in your friend’s house and possibly does not understand how that is different from when he is walking outside. Maybe after training him on multiple houses, he may generalize to certain types of houses.
We adopted an 19mo old male shiba 2 months ago. He has food aggression issues, but we’re working with a behaviorialist and have established rules for him so we’re pack leaders. We are currently hand-feeding and have a definitive feeding plan in place for next 8 weeks.
He still will occasionally bite at our feet when he doesnt want us to go in a certain area. He’s bitten through a few shoes! I’m pretty sure it’s just him being dominant and challenging our role as the “alpha”. The behavioralist said to ignore him when he does this, but that doesnt work.
Have you encountered this problem? If so, how did you deal with it?
One thing that has worked very well for me is to use a drag lead and a flat collar. My Shiba is now about 3 and although I don’t have to use the drag lead much anymore, I still leave it on.
When he bites, or performs one of his Shiba moves on me I would non-mark him (No or ack-ack) and stop him with the drag lead. Then I get him to do something else – e.g. go to mat. If he ignores the command and goes back to his previous behavior, I say Timeout and put him in timeout in the laundry room. If he complies with the command he gets rewarded with attention and sometimes food rewards.
Here is more on what I do with the drag-lead
http://shibashake.com/dog/puppy-obedience-training#draglead
However, I am not a trainer, so you may want to ask your behaviorist and see what he/she says. In general you want to use a consistent set of techniques so that there is no confusion for the dog.
We have 3 dogs, a spayed female husky who is the dominant dog (8 years old, had since she was a puppy), a neutered male husky (10 years old, had since he was 2), and a spayed husky/chow mix (5 years old, had one year).
When we first got the husky/chow mix, she and the other female had a few spats, and then my husky laid down the law one day and everything was great for about a year. Now, the husky/chow is afraid to come in the house from the back yard, because the female husky has dominated her at the door. She lays at the door and intimidates her if she tries to come in. Since we have a dog door, they come and go as they please, and this new behavior just started about a month ago. We don’t let her do it when we see it, but I can only imagine how much of this goes on while I’m at work! Now husky/chow won’t even come in for supper.
How can we change the behavior of either or both of them so that husky/chow feels free to come and go through the door?
Is it possible to keep your female husky in a separate area when you are at work or not home?
In this way, the Chow mix can have her own space when they are by themselves.
When you are home, and have time to supervise, then keep a close watch on the door. As soon as the female husky approaches and tries to dominate the Chow, non-mark her (No) and body block her away. Then give her an alternate command, e.g. go to her Mat. If she keeps persisting then a time-out may be appropriate.
If you do this consistently, she will learn that you set the house rules.
I have a 1 year old, very hyper, Boxer/cattle dog mix. He is generally a good dog but I am having a hard time with a few things. First, he continues to mouth and play nip other dogs and humans. I’ve tried the “ouch” approach which had no effect. I’ve tried holding his mouth shut for 10 seconds and I’ve tried short time outs. Anything else? The more pressing issue at this time is his dominance over other dogs. I love to go to the dog park with him but 50% of the time he gets into it with another dog forcing us to leave. At first I though he just plays rough but I think when he really gets challenged by another dog he gets aggressive and will not leave the other dog alone. I’m getting tired of wondering if it will be a good visit to the park or an embarrassing episode. Any advice? Thanks
Hello Tosha2,
I know what you mean – my Shiba is like that. When I take him to the dog park he seems to gravitate towards the dogs who don’t want to play with him and then keeps at them.
One thing that may help is to totally remove him from the enclosed park space when he acts out. Walk with him a bit outside, do some obedience commands, then once he is more calm, you can try again. If he goes back to pestering the same dog, repeat. In this way he learns that if he does not listen he does not get to play.
In general, however, I am not a big proponent of enclosed dog parks. Here are some reasons why –
http://www.shibashake.com/dog/enclosed-dog-parks-g
As for the biting on hands, I find that it is generally most effective to follow up the non-mark (e.g. ouch or No) with an alternate command. This way he not only learns what he shouldn’t do, but also what he should do instead. Make sure to reward him with some calm play or calm affection when he complies with the alternate command. This way, he learns that doing the alternate behavior gets him attention and rewards whereas biting gets him nothing or a time-out.
After reading your post, I have to say it fully sounds like your dog dominates you. If you have to constantly reinforce the same “laws” you have implemented then you are obviously are not the “alpha dog”. If you have a significant other, then that person is breaking the rules you implied, which is in turn being learned by the dogs. Or you are showing some sort of favoritism and the “dominant” dog is getting mixed messages.
Thanks for dropping by pst. Your comment made me think of Cesar Millan.
It is amazing how you know so much and are so sure of everything, without having ever met me, my dogs, or even seen their routine and environment. That is some special talent.
Hi Shibashake,
Thank you for the great article and the wonderful advice you’ve been giving everyone. I’ve had dogs all my life, including a fear-aggressive Lhasa Apso rescue, and have never had any problems, until my current dog. My husband and I knew we wanted a family, so we went to a breeder for a gentle family dog, a Bernese Mountain Dog puppy named Charlie. He is 5 years old now, neutered, and is constantly testing boundaries and trying to show dominance. I already do everything you’ve mentioned. I practice NILIF, he has lots of rules, no getting on furniture, no going in the kitchen (he is a very practiced sneak thief and will take and eat anything, including bags of sugar). I don’t greet him immediately upon arriving home, he gets time outs when misbehaving, we practice obedience every day, no rough-housing or tug of war games, etc. We’ve taken him to obedience school (we live in Germany), and the reaction we’ve gotten from every trainer is that Charlie is sweet but extremely temperamental. I used to have the energy for dealing with him, but I’m pregnant with a toddler now and it’s getting stressful to constantly confront his testing of boundaries, not to mention I can’t control him as well on the leash anymore and sometimes just have to let go of the leash (I used to be able to get him to calm down pretty well, but now he fights a lot more). He hadn’t shown aggression either, until just recently. Now when I try to calmly move him into his time out room, he’ll growl and mouth my hand. I don’t like the way things are heading. Any advice?
Congratulations on your upcoming baby 🙂 Boy or girl?
Bernese Mountain Dogs are really beautiful. Love their coat and face. And a sugar thief?! – lol – Charlie sounds like my Shiba Inu who is also very temperamental.
One thing that could help is to get a dog walker or to put Charlie in a dog daycare a couple of days a week. This will give you a much needed break, as well as keep Charlie busy.
I used to have a dog walker do group dog walks with my Shiba Inu at the park – 3 times a week. After these excursions – he is totally pooped and less likely to get into mischief. He also enjoys himself a lot, gets good mental and physical exercise, and gets to socialize with other dogs.
Another thing that helped with my Shiba Inu is doing private training sessions at home with several different trainers. It helped to have a few trainers observe me interacting with him in a home setting and letting me know where my timing or technique was off. I liked getting different opinions so that I can get a fuller picture of what was going on.
The thing that made the biggest difference with Shiba is controlling my own energy. Shiba is very smart and knows when I am angry, stressed, or frustrated. Once he sensed this, he would act out even more. Once I controlled my own energy and stayed calm, Shiba’s behavior improved significantly. Controlling my own energy was not easy.
Here are some of the things that helped me –
http://shibashake.com/dog/pack-leader-to-an-aggressive-dog
How does Charlie act wrt. your toddler? and other members of the family?
Has Charlie escalated his behavior recently?
Has anything else in Charlie’s routine changed?
Hi, Thanks for your response. Don’t know yet what the gender of the new baby is. My toddler completely dominates Charlie. That’s no problem. Our toddler can take toys from Charlie and put his own food down in front of him without worrying about the dog taking the food. My toddler is pretty calm (as far as toddlers go), and treats the dog well (again, as far as toddlers go). Charlie waits for both me and my child to go through doorways before he enters a rooms. My husband is dominated by Charlie. I’ve gotten my husband to make Charlie lie down before giving Charlie attention, but my husband is in charge at work and doesn’t want to worry about being in charge at home. He’s always complaining about Charlie being a roadblock and getting in the way whenever he wants to do something Charlie doesn’t want him to do. Charlie is his first dog. But he works so much that he doesn’t want to put any effort into dog training. I know that’s a problem. I’ve shown him Dog Whisperer and talked to him about it for 5 years, I don’t think I’m going to change his behavior.
Personally, I’m a very calm and assertive person. I’m always being complemented for being easy going and yet authoritative and rise to leadership positions without pursuing them whenever I’m in a group. Like I said, I never had a problem with a dog before. I’ve often been the only person in a group that can deal with a troubled dog. I’ve watched Cesar Millan and feel I do a pretty good job of having calm-assertive energy.
Our neighbors love Charlie, and we live in a rural area, he’s sort of the neighborhood mascot and we’re known in town as “Charlie’s owners”. My husband takes him on short walks every morning and evening. I often take him on 30-60 minute walks through pasture, woods and farmland most days (if I can’t do the walk, we go out to a pasture and play fetch until he can’t stand up anymore), on weekends he usually gets a long hike with my husband. We’ve got teenagers across the street that take him 3-4 times a week for a walk and play (they’re usually out 2 hours + and walk to neighboring towns with him to see friends), plus our next door neighbor takes him a couple times a month as well. So I can’t see that lack of exercise is a problem.
His behavior has escalated in the last couple months. He never growled at me before then. We’ve also had to start locking him in the hallway (closing and locking the doors to all rooms) when we leave because he will destroy things when we’re gone. He’s learned to open doors if the doors aren’t locked and will get diapers out of the diaper pail, or toilet paper off the toilet paper holder and tear them up. He’ll also go through the trash can and shred any paper products he finds.
His energy level has never declined since we’ve had him, which I think is really unusual for a Berner. I had a husky before and that was normal for that breed, but Charlie still has the energy level of a puppy at 5 years old. When we’re away from home, he stays at a luxury dog hotel where he gets two long group walks and group play every day and he is placed with the young dogs because the dogs his age can’t deal with his energy level. They love Charlie there, but said he breaks into their food storage area regularly.
I guess, typing all this out, maybe the problem is perhaps my husband being inconsistent about the rules. I don’t really know how to take a different approach to him though!
I just got a Olde English bulldog that is 2 years old. HE is INSANELY hyper. Obviously never had any disipline. Jumps on you constantly despite the “knee” trick. We only pet him when he is not jumping, and praise him for it, then stop as soon as he is jumping again. Anyhow, he is uncontrollably hyper. Pinning him down reluts in him thinking you are playing and him trying to bite on you (in play) which we discourage. The bigger problem is trying to introduce him to our other male dogs. We do breed, and plan on breeding him some day. So none of our dogs are neautered. And there are females present. Introducing males to the pack has usually gone pretty smooth. But being he is so hyper AND he wants to dominate everyone.,..has made it difficult. He tries to hump all the male dogs. And they don’t want any part of it. We have an English mastiff, much bigger than him, that is dominant of everyone. He is so gentle and sweet. But lets them know right off he is the bigger dog and gently grabs them to show his dominance (grabs them with his legs not mouth). Well this new hyper boy leaps nad jumps and tries to dominate everyone. We can tell him NO, pull him off, nothing works. He ignores us completely. He has no respect for us at all. It’s like we are not even there. So we don’t know how to get this hyper boy to CALM DOWN and realize he is not the leader of the pack, and respect the other dogs as well. Any help please apreciated.
I do not breed dogs, and therefore have little experience with unfixed dogs.
The kneeing thing never worked well for me either. In fact it got my Shiba even more excited and crazy. What worked well with my Shiba whenever he got overly excited, is to stay calm, and not interact with him physically. If he did not stop, I just removed him (by drag lead with a flat collar) to time-out so that he could calm down. That way he learned that crazy behavior means don’t get to be with people or dogs, and calm behavior means he gets to play.
I also make sure that he is very well exercised. After he gets rid of his excited energy, he is easier to retrain while at home.
Another thing that really helped me a lot when I was having troubles with my Shiba is visiting the Shiba breeders that lived nearby. They were very helpful and let me know what to expect from my Shiba and what were normal Shiba behaviors.
They may be a great resource for you as well. I used the breeder directory at the AKC site.
A professional trainer with breed specific experience can also be very helpful.
You have some very good and helpful information on your post, but part of the problem in regards to explaining behaviors is that we often misinterpret our dogs intentions as something else.
Case in point being the above photo with the caption, “Dominant Dog – Shiba Inu Sephy testing his boundaries.” Sephy’s, not really testing boundaries in this photo, this is more or less a “This looks like it could be fun” thing, until of course he saw what I can only imagine was the photographers displeasure with this act.
( Of course this could also be a look of “Better get away from my stuff”, because dogs of different personalities will often display similar body languages while their intent being different.)
Although some may describe this act as an exploratory behavior, it’s based in fun nonetheless. As I’m sure this little guy already knows there’s great fun to be had with all the cool stuff in this box.
What you say is very true. We often misinterpret our dog’s actions, and perhaps think it is dominance behavior when often, it is not. I find dogs fascinating, so I always try to observe my guys very closely and learn all I can about what they are trying to tell me. Still, I probably miss a lot of what they say because their body language goes by so rapidly.
As for the photo – you are right that my Shiba does a lot of these things because he thinks they are fun. He also thinks that challenging his boundaries is great fun. He is a great character and is always trying out new things and testing old things. Sometimes he reminds me of that Verizon commercial – except he asks – Can I do this now? 🙂
I understand and agree that dominance is not at the root of all ills, but I do think that dominance sometimes does apply.
Shibashake,
when i take my dog to the off leash park he acts like the great dog i know he is but when we run into this one dog who is the same breed, just younger he’s super dominant.
at first i thought it was because he wasn’t nuetered and he was older but now that he is nuetered, he hasnt changed his behavior.
how do i challenge his dominace wen its only towards one dog?
p.s.
he plays with every other dog fine and he listens reativley well wen at home! its one dog and theyve only met twice!
Hello only1dog,
It could be any number of things – the way the other dog holds himself, (is the other dog neutered?), the way the other dog smells, or the way the other dog acts. It may be best to just keep them apart.
One possibility is to call our dog back to us, whenever we notice him focusing-on or moving towards other dog. I also play with my dog for a bit to distract him, then let him get back to the other dogs.
If he doesn’t listen and keeps going after the one dog, I just calmly get him and make him stay by me for a while. This will teach him that if he tries to engage the one dog, he doesn’t get to play at all. We may need to repeat this exercise more than a few times before he learns to leave the one dog alone.
Another possibility is to slowly desensitize our dog to the other dog, but in order to do that, we need to do one-on-one training, in a quiet place, with just our dog and the one dog.
hey! awesome article, it helps alot.
my dog is a fixed ~1.5 year old brittany. we only realise it now, but we brought him up wrong, with love, affection and praise before rules and boundaries.. and as a result, he tries to be dominant. we taught him tons of tricks and now that we’ve changed the relationship a bit, he’s becoming a lot better. except now he’s starting to show aggression.
we brought him to the dog park today, and we went insane. he saw a smaller dog and immediately began to bark viciously, and tried to lunge through the fence. we didn’t let him in, but we left. before we left though, he bit my sister who tried to first pull him away, then tried the alpha roll. he goes into such a state that the skin around his eyes turn purple and his eye balls red.
that’s happened a few times before, and all with smaller dogs at that same park. i want to overcome this behavior. what should we do in those situations- leave, or try to calm him and introduce him to the dogs? should we get a professional trainer?
Your situation sounds similar to what I went through with my Shiba Inu. I started out with very little discipline, and he really became a wild child 🙂 Then, I started using aversive techniques including alpha rolls and leash jerks. This was taught to be by a traditional trainer. Things got a bit better for a little bit of time, then Shiba started getting aggressive with me. Here are some things that helped me –
1. Stop doing alpha rolls. Alpha rolls are extremely difficult to implement properly and can often encourage aggression in dogs. This University of Pennsylvania study shows that using aversive techniques (including alpha rolls and leash jerks)increased aggression in 1 of the 4 dogs that they surveyed.
http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/if-youre-aggressive-your-dog-will-be-too-says-veterinary-study-university-pennsylvania
2. Switch to reward based dog training. I used to think that reward training is not going to be effective for a dominant dog, but it really worked a lot better for me than the physical aversive techniques I was using. Reward training can be used to both encourage good behaviors as well as stop bad behaviors.
3. Start small. I would stay away from dog parks for now. The dog park environment can be very high stress, very high stimulus for a dog. What you want to do is slowly desensitize him to other dogs in a more quiet and controlled environment.
http://shibashake.com/dog/dog-to-dog-aggression#desensitize
4. With aggression issues, it can be very helpful to get a professional trainer. I would recommend getting a positive reinforcement trainer as opposed to the traditional physical force trainers. Once I switched over to reward training and started instituting some rules and routine with my Shiba, he started acting well and there was a great reduction in his bite instinct. Nowadays, his first instinct is still to use his mouth, but usually he will think and stop himself before he escalates.
I would also highly recommend bite-inhibition training. It really saved me from my Shiba when he was leash biting, people biting, and leg humping and whatever else.