Teaching Why “Alpha” Is Flawed In Middletown RI Dog Training Class

I taught dog training classes at The Potter League for Animals in Middletown RI for a while.

It’s a great shelter with some great people.

When I would teach a class at the shelter the first thing I would teach was about leadership and was very careful using the term “Alpha.”

The first “canine term” most people learn is the word Alpha.

“You have to be your dog’s alpha,” most of the experts claim as soon as the new dog owner attends an obedience class.

There is mucho confusion about this in the dog training world, there is also a lot of arguing about this.

So let me clear this up for you and make it easy to understand.

Here is what you need to know. Dogs are social animals. Any social animal will respond to a structure. In other words, you’ll have some dogs with a submissive personality, you’ll have some dogs with a more dominant personality.

The submissive dog will defer to the more dominant dog, but here is the important point to remember:

Behavior is always in a CONSTANT state of flux.

Sometimes a submissive dog will challenge the dominant dog.  I used to have a very submissive Great Dane named Quinn. At the same time I had a very dominant Belgian Malinois named Suede.

If Quinn was laying on the couch he would absolutely refuse to move for Suede. Why did this happen? Isn’t the submissive dog supposed to do everything the dominant dog wants?

Not really.

My point is that you need to think more about positioning then you do about “Being Alpha.”

Position yourself as the one who controls the activities that are important to your dog. Control the food, play, sleeping areas and social contact.

Doing this will make obedience training much easier and is especially important when it comes to the recall (come when called) command.

If you’d like to learn more about leadership and how to train your dog using positive, friendly, effective methods check out any of our classes by going here NEXT:

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Best,

Eric