Dog Behavior: Why the Real Wolf Model Is Important in Dog Training
Does the Domesticated Dog’s Genetic Diversity Come from the Wolf’s DNA?
Originally published in different form at PsychologyToday.com on October 14, 2010.
Dog & Wolf Playing
Breeding for Submission or Predation?
Dogs are the most diverse species on earth. Their natural habitat is any place where human beings live and work,, including Antarctica. (After all, dogs helped us find the South Pole!) According to zoologist Desmond Morris, there are over 1,000 breeds, each with its own specific body type and unique set of character traits.
Meanwhile, even though the latest genetic tests show that dogs and wolves share a common ancestor, there is nothing in the behavior or morphology (body shape, color, structure, etc.) of the domesticated dog’s wild cousins to account for the incredible physical and behavioral diversity we see in dogs. After all, there’s very little variation seen in the size, body shape, and facial configurations of wolves, let alone the same kind of behavioral diversity we see in dogs.
Examples of the Genetic Diversity of Wolves
One Example of the Genetic Diversity of Dogs
So where did all this diversity come from?
Up until recently it was believed that roughly 10,000 to 12,000 years ago our ancestors began selecting wolves, who inhabited areas near human settlements, for their qualities of tameness, submission, and sociability. And by doing so we were also, either accidentally or intentionally, increasing their genetic tendencies toward what's called neoteny, the retention of juvenile or puppylike characteristics (things like friendliness, submission and floppy ears) into adulthood. And these puppylike body shapes and behavioral tendencies also resulted in variegated coats, differences in size and skull structure, along with the kinds of behavioral characteristics found in juvenile wolves.
New research , however, shows that the dog/human relationship began much, much earlier than that—perhaps more than 40,000 years ago when our ancestors and our dogs's ancestors teamed up to hunt mastadons together.
The Dog Gene Pool Is a Gold Mine
Recently, evolutionary biologist Ursula Goodenough talked about modern research on canine genetics for National Public Radio: “Breeding programs,” she says, “can only yield as much variation as is harbored in the gene pool.” This means that most of the diversity we see in modern dogs probably comes directly from their gene pool and not the behavioral tendencies dogs were selected for by our distant ancestors. In fact Goodenough says that “the dog gene pool is a gold mine.”
So what’s inside this gold mine?
Two things: insertional mutations, and tandem-repeat sequences.
You're probably wondering what that means. Me too. Goodenough explains: “Dog genomes harbor DNA sequences that tend to leave one chromosomal location and insert themselves into a second. Should they happen to insert into a gene or a regulatory element, this modifies the encoded genetic information, generating ‘insertional mutations.’” She says that dog genomes have at least 11,000 of these mutations whereas human genomes have less than 1,000!
The second source of Fido’s genetic diversity comes during fetal development. That’s because dog DNA also carries a feature called “tandem-repeat sequences,” where one bit of genetic code is repeated over and over (and over and over). “When such regions are copied in the germ line,” Goodenough says, “the copying enzymes tend to . . . synthesize too many or too few repeats, generating ‘slippage mutations’ in eggs and sperm that are inherited by offspring. The slippage rate is far higher in dogs than in other carnivores.”
Okay, so dogs have this kind of slippery, easily modified quality to their DNA. They also have more of it than our DNA does. The next question is, at what point did the insertional mutations and slippage rates in the dog’s DNA come into play? Was it before, during, or after the domestication process? In other words, did it already pre-exist in wolves or is it only found in dogs?
It turns out that the DNA of modern wolves shows the same remarkably high levels of these two genetic mutation factors. So apparently, dogs did, in fact, inherit their morphological and behavioral variability directly from wolves.
Of course this doesn't mean that all the diversity we see in dogs happened naturally. Dogs have been bred for various purposes for thousands of years, starting at the time we developed agriculture and began forming permanent settlements. Even though we may have hunted with our dogs' ancestors 40,000 years ago, it wasn't until around 12,000 years ago that we began domesticating dogs. The domestication of house cats started around 5,500 years ago and horses around 2,000 years ago. Yet in terms of their diversity, cats and horses don't exhibit anything close to what's seen in the family dog.
So we know that artificial selection was the primary cause of diversity in domesticated dogs. But why would wolves—who exhibit far less diversity than dogs, cats or horses—have this amazing potential? After all, each sub-species of wolf shows far fewer differences in body shape and behavior than what's found in dogs, cats or horses.
How Wolves Make a Living
The only way the wolf's pack style of hunting can be successful is through variability or diversity of temperament, relative to each animal’s role in the hunt: some need to have a direct approach while others need to hold back, or circle the prey, etc. This is why in every wolf pack, some members have a direct (mistakenly thought of as dominant) temperament, while others are more indirect (or submissive). If they all had the same approach to prey, the hunt would surely fail.
This diversity of temperament can also be seen in every new litter of puppies, from great Danes to Chihuahuas, a clear spectrum from the most direct (or “dominant”) to the most indirect (or “submissive”). And with all the different kinds of breeding programs humans have devised over the last 12,000+ years, why does this diversity—this spectrum from dominant to submissive—still show itself with such clarity and exactitude in each and every litter of puppies born to every female dog, in every breed imaginable?
I thik it has to be related to this facet of the way wolves hunt together. There is no other explanation as to why the DNA in both the dog and wolf has the potential for so much variability. This means there’s something contained within the wolf’s style of hunting that’s vital to the domesticated dog’s relationship with us. After all, homo sapiens and some members of the canidae family are the only two types of land animal with an evolutionary history of hunting large, dangerous prey by working together as a cohesive social group.
The Dog Training Marketplace
Most people think there are only two options for choosing a dog trainer: dominance/pack leader training and positive reinforcement. And since dominance training is based on a huge misunderstanding about the deeply social nature of wolves, and since trainers in the “positive“ training movement are rightfully against the use of force, pain and coerciion in training pet dogs, they seem to also feel it necessary to dismiss the importance of the dog’s genetic relationship with wolves in order to dissuade dog owners from hiring trainers who use and promote those techniques.
This is why most +R dog trainers in New York City (and the rest of the world) tend to describe themselves as anti-dominance, as found in this quote from a popular New York dog training website which tells us that their trainers "promote a relationship between you and your dog based on cooperation and trust, rather than force and submission."
That sounds good, doesn't it? Cooperation and trust?
That's why the real wolf model is so important. Cooperation and trust don't come through training methods based on laboratory experiments done on rats and pigeons locked inside Skinner boxes. Why train a dog the way you'd train a rat or pigeon? Real cooperation and trust can only come through understanding your dog's true nature, his genetic history as a group predator, and through forming a relationship that satisfies his deepest emotional needs. It's true that dominance training can't do that. But neither can positive reinforcement. Why? Because it's based on a generalized view of “how all animals learn.” It doesn't take your dog's evolutionary and genetic history into account.
People want what's best for their dogs. They want their dogs to be happy, but they also want to have control over their dogs under any and all conditions and keep them safe from harm. I've been training dogs for over 25 years. I've tried, used and tested dominance training and positive reinforcement methods, and in my experience they don't work as well as Natural Dog Training, which is the only popular training model built on an understanding of the true cooperative nature of the wolf pack, the evolutionary purpose it serves, and the fact that dogs and humans have been hunting partners for over 40,000 years. It's only through understanding your dog's true nature as a social predator that you can really learn how to train and motivate your dog to obey under any and all conditions, and do so in a way that he truly loves.
Anyway, that's how I see it.
Lee Charles Kelley
“Life Is an Adventure—Where Will Your Dog Take You?”
