Read Online Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz - Free Book Online Page B

skating on rigid limbs down the filthy street. This woman could benefit from more reflection on her dog's animal nature, and less on his resemblance to a stuffed toy. In fact, as we'll see, understanding some of the dogs' complexities—the acuity of their noses, what they can see and cannot see, their loss of fearfulness, and the simple affect of a wag—goes a long way to understanding dogs.
    On the other hand, in a number of ways, calling a dog just an animal, and explaining all dog behavior as emerging from wolf behavior, is incomplete and misleading. The key to dogs' success living with us in our homes is the very fact that dogs are not wolves.
    For instance, it is high time we revamp the false notion that our dogs view us as their "pack." The "pack" language—with its talk of the "alpha" dog, dominance, and submission—is one of the most pervasive metaphors for the family of humans and dogs. It originates where dogs originated: dogs emerged from wolflike ancestors, and wolves form packs. Thus, it is claimed, dogs form packs. The seeming naturalness of this move is belied by some of the attributes we don't transfer from wolves to dogs: wolves are hunters, but we don't let our dogs hunt for their own food.* And though we may feel secure with a dog at the threshold of a nursery, we would never let a wolf alone in a room with our sleeping newborn baby, seven pounds of vulnerable meat.
    Still, to many, the analogy to a dominance-pack organization is terribly appealing—especially with us as dominant and the dog submissive. Once applied, the popular conception of a pack works itself into all sorts of interactions with our dogs: we eat first, the dog second; we command, the dog obeys; we walk the dog, the dog doesn't walk us. Unsure how to deal with an animal in our midst, the "pack" notion gives us a structure.
    Unfortunately, it not only limits the kind of understanding and interaction we can have with our dogs, it also relies on a faulty premise. The "pack" evoked in this way bears little resemblance to actual wolf packs. The traditional model of the pack was that of a linear hierarchy, with a ruling alpha pair and various "beta" and even "gamma" or "omega" wolves below them, but contemporary wolf biologists find this model far too simplistic. It was formed from observations of captive wolves. With limited space and resources in small, enclosed pens, unrelated wolves self-organize, and a hierarchy of power results. The same might happen in any social species confined with little room.
    In the wild, wolf packs consist almost entirely of related or mated animals. They are families, not groups of peers vying for the top spot. A typical pack includes a breeding pair and one or many generations of their offspring. The pack unit organizes social behavior and hunting behavior. Only one pair mates, while other adult or adolescent pack members participate in raising the pups. Different individuals hunt and share food; at times, many members together hunt large prey which may be too large to tackle individually. Unrelated animals do occasionally join together to form packs with multiple breeding partners, but this is an exception, probably an accommodation to environmental pressures. Some wolves never join a pack.
    The one breeding pair—parents to all or most of the other pack members—guides the group's course and behaviors, but to call them "alphas" implies a vying for the top that is not quite accurate. They are not alpha dominants any more than a human parent is the alpha in the family. Similarly, the subordinate status of a young wolf has more to do with his age than with a strictly enforced hierarchy. Behaviors seen as "dominant" or "submissive" are used not in a scramble for power, they are used to maintain social unity. Rather than being a pecking order, rank is a mark of age. It is regularly on display in the animals' expressive postures in greeting and in interaction. Approaching an older wolf with a low wagging tail