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Did you know that the alpha dog myth has been disproven many years ago?

The original ideas from Rudolph Schenkel posited that in a pack wolves would constantly fight for dominance and one of them would become the "alpha wolf" and lead the pack. These ideas were later picked up by David Mech and shared in the 1970 book "The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species".

The dog training community grabbed this information and just ran with it for dogs as the only way to interact with them. Those ideas, originally developed about 90 years ago have been categorically disproven many times . David Mech himself has retracted those statements.

In addition to all of that, when interacting with dogs (which are obviously not wolves) that ethological perspective is way less helpful than an applied behaviour analysis one. Describing behaviour and the conditions in which it happens is a much more elegant way to go about dog training than trying to determine if dogs have any solid perceptions of their social structure.

In summary, dogs do not live in hierarchical structured packs and even if they did, it wouldn't matter for us.

There will be a Train Me Please video on this topic available in a few months. Stay tuned.