'Alpha Dog' Notion May Be Wrong

[petrossa]

Groucho Marx once said, "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

A look at why dogs' eyes are so unique with the author of "Inside of a Dog."

But it is beginning to get lighter in there, thanks to modern cognitive science.

Groucho's quip graces the opening page of "Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know," a new book by cognitive scientist and psychologist Alexandra Horowitz that goes a long way to suggest what it's like to think with a dog's brain -- to actually be a dog.

Combining new knowledge from hundreds of scientific and animal behavior studies, and mixing it in with a fine style guided by her own loving bemusement of dogs -- especially of her own Finnegan, rescued as a sick and needy pup from a shelter -- Horowitz gives us a fascinating picture of a dog's umwelt (OOM-velt) -- German for "their subjective or 'self-world'."

<snip very interesting remarks>

'Alpha Dog' Notion May Be Wrong

Challenging a belief so common that it has dug deep into our language, Horowitz expressed doubt about the universal notion of the "alpha dog."

"The wolf research that I've seen doesn't support the notion that the wolf pack is one of domination," she said. "Instead, it's more like a family unit," she told us, as the leashless dogs still swirled exuberantly around us, forming little groups, checking each other out, forming new groups, and generally energizing the entire scene.

"I don't think that we need to be dominating our dogs," she said.

She describe how both dogs and humans seem, from her research, to naturally conduct their familial behavior -- including how the members of her own young family (including the now leaping Finnegan) related to each other:

"Instead, we are a family together," Horowitz said. "We learn by observing each other; we learn by small punishments, not large punishments -- and by rewards. This is a better model for building a relationship with a dog."

http://abcnews.go.co...10494333&page=3