The idea that dogs are driven by pack hierarchy and dominance has affected how people talk about behaviour for years. It’s influenced training advice, everyday language, the way ‘normal’ dog behaviour gets interpreted…

But those ideas started from very specific place in time (1947 to be exact!) and they’ve often been applied and generalised far beyond their original context.

Let’s have a look at where it all began and why it’s just a perpetuated myth.

In one of my previous articles, I looked at how dogs actually became dogs – animals shaped over thousands of years of domestication, selective breeding and adaptation to human life. That history is important for context. So, if you haven’t read it yet – do go have a look before you read on here.

Back to it then…Most of us have heard some version of it.

“He’s the leader of the pack.”

“You need to be the alpha.”

“She thinks she’s the boss.”

“He’s trying to dominate you.”

It’s been around for decades. I still hear it regularly – online forums, training advice, well-meaning friends…

And like most ideas that stick around that long, it didn’t come from nowhere. But it also didn’t age particularly well. At all.

When people talk about ‘alphas’ and ‘pack leaders’, they’re usually blending two different concepts without realising it – pack theory and dominance.

Ok, so what is ‘pack’ theory?

When people say dogs are ‘pack animals’, it sounds harmless enough. But the trouble is, because of the meaning that’s been associated with the word ‘pack’, it’s not used in an accurate way.

Let me explain. In old-school dog training culture, the word pack has always been used as shorthand for a very specific belief – that dogs organise themselves into rigid hierarchies and humans have to establish themselves as the leader. Human = boss. Dog = subordinate.

That’s basically the backbone of pack theory.

Within it, dogs are assumed to be constantly assessing status, i.e. if you don’t take the top spot, your dog will try to.

So, a whole range of behaviours get viewed from that perspective…

Growling becomes ‘dominance’.

Pulling on the lead becomes a dog ‘trying to lead’.

Jumping up becomes ‘disrespect’.

And once you believe that story, the solution always sounds the same, show the dog who’s boss.

So, where did this idea come from?

The wolf research that started it

In 1947, Swiss animal behaviourist Rudolf Schenkel published observations of captive wolves housed together in zoological settings. These wolves were not family groups. They were unrelated adults placed together in confined conditions. Under those circumstances, clear hierarchies emerged (no surprise there!). Some wolves gained priority access to food and space using aggression and rank-related behaviour. Because of this, wolves were assumed to have this structured/dominance hierarchy behaviour.

Then a few decades later, came along the American wildlife research biologist L. David Mech, aka Dave. In 1970 he published ‘The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species’. Drawing on the dominant framework of the time, his book popularised terms like ‘alpha male’ and ‘alpha female’ in wider culture.

And it captured people’s imaginations…Dogs descended from wolves. Wolves were described as living in strict hierarchies. Therefore, dogs must be driven by hierarchy too.

It felt logical. It was simple. It gave humans a clear role.

Television trainers adopted it. Books repeated it. ‘Alpha’ was suddenly in everyday language.

The idea travelled fast.

But the story changed

As wolf research expanded into long-term field studies of wild populations (rather than captive ones), including Mech’s own work in the 80s and 90s, the picture became a little bit more…well, nuanced.

Wild wolves were found to live in family-based social groups, rather than collections of unrelated adults competing for rank. The ‘leaders’ of the groups were actually just the parents – the groups were typically mum and dad and their offspring. They didn’t maintain a role as ‘leader of a pack’ with dominance battles, they were just adults raising their young. Can they show assertive control? Yes. Are there occasional serious conflicts in unstable or changing groups? Also, yes. But is there a constant, dramatic ‘alpha’ power struggle at the heart of stable wild wolf families? No.

Mech even went on to publish a ‘clarification’ in 1999 recommending the term ‘alpha’ was dropped when describing these natural wolf groups as it implied aggressive power struggles that weren’t representative of most wild groups. So the person who coined the term ‘alpha’ in the first place effectively said, “Sorry, I was wrong.”

The dominance-heavy model introduced by Schenkel had come from artificial captive conditions. Natural wolf social structure looked different. And that’s important.

And then we applied it to dogs

Even if the early captive model had accurately described wolves in that specific setting, domestic dogs are not captive wolves.

As I talked about in my previous article, dogs have been evolving alongside humans for tens of thousands of years. They went through domestication, behavioural selection, breed diversification and adaptation to human environments.

Our modern dogs are shaped by selective breeding for specific tasks. Many breeds are only a few hundred years old (though I know a lot of people will argue with this!).

In a study led by Brian Hare in 2002, dogs were tested on tasks that required them to use human communicative signals (like pointing or looking) to locate hidden food. The dogs reliably followed these cues. As part of the same study, wolves that had been hand-raised by humans were tested using the same tasks. They did not show the same consistent ability to use these human signals.

Even very young domestic dog puppies, only a few weeks old and with limited human experience, were able to use the cues successfully. These findings suggest that during the process of domestication, dogs have been selected for a set of social-cognitive abilities that enable them to communicate with humans in unique ways. I.e. when it comes to understanding human communication, domestic dogs are not the same as wolves.

And when researchers have looked at dogs living independently of humans (free-ranging and/or so-called ‘street’ dogs) the picture still doesn’t resemble the old wolf-pack hierarchy model. These dogs tend to form loose, fluid social groups rather than rigid, rank-based structures. Where more stable groups do form, this appears to be influenced by concentrated resources and breeding patterns, not a constant battle for status.

So even outside our homes, dogs aren’t organising themselves into dramatic, alpha-led packs.

This all means that it’s a huge leap from Schenkel’s research (in 1947!!) on captive wolves forming hierarchies to the idea that your dog is trying to be the boss of you; it skips A LOT of evolutionary history.

It basically simplifies thousands of years of domestication and is based upon something that actually wasn’t all that accurate in the first place.

Why the dominance story stuck

The dominance model is tidy. It offers a simple explanation for complex behaviour. It gives humans a clear role…be the boss. It also mirrors how we often think about human hierarchies. We understand authority. We recognise status. It feels familiar.

But it’s based on something from decades ago, that has been re-studied, clarified, and shown to be an oversimplification when applied to domestic dogs.

Modern, research-backed, canine behavioural science tends to interpret behaviour with a different perspective – emotion, learning history, reinforcement, genetics and environment.

A dog who growls over food may be anxious about losing it.

A dog who jumps up may be overexcited and reinforced by attention.

A dog who pulls may have learned that pulling works in getting them where they want to go.

None of those are a dog climbing a social ladder.

The risk of getting the motivation wrong

If we assume behaviour is about status, we’re more likely to respond with confrontation.

Historically, dominance-based training included techniques like the ‘alpha roll’ (forcibly pinning a dog onto their back). These methods were justified by the belief that dogs must be shown who is in charge.

Research into stress and learning shows that these types of punitive approaches can suppress behaviour, but they don’t necessarily address underlying emotional states. In some cases, they increase anxiety or defensive responses. In the UK, organisations like the British Veterinary Association, the Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors (their membership standards are set out by The Animal Behaviour and Training Council) and Dogs Trust promote reward-based, evidence-led approaches to training and behaviour. These frameworks do not rely on dominance or ‘alpha’ models.

When we mislabel a dog’s fear, frustration or arousal as dominance, we risk responding to the wrong problem…and making it worse.

So, if it’s not about rank, what is it about?

Dogs are not blank slates. We know that.

They carry genetic tendencies influenced by selective breeding. They experience emotions. They learn from consequences. They respond to their environment.

Behaviour emerges from a whole mix of things. Just like it does with us humans.

That doesn’t mean structure, guidance or training aren’t important. They are. But they don’t need to be framed as a battle for status.

Dogs are not trying to overthrow their humans! They’re just trying to make sense of the world in front of them.

Why this matters

Understanding where pack and dominance theories came from can really help us see their limits.

• Early dominance models were based on captive wolves.
• Later wild research changed that picture.
• Domestic dogs are not wolves living in our houses.
• Behaviour is rarely about social ambition.

When we change from, “How do I show my dog I’m in charge?” to, “What is my dog feeling and learning right now?” everything changes.

Which is usually a better starting point.

Want to have more of a deep dive yourself?

David Mech’s website

Debra Horwitz and Gary Landsberg’s article on dominance, alpha and pack leadership

Daniels and Bekoff’s study on the population and social biology of free-ranging dogs

Hare et al’s study on the domestication of social cognition in dogs