10/13/2026
Few words in dog behavior carry as much baggage as dominance.
A lot of that baggage is well deserved. Ideas about owners needing to be “alpha,” dogs trying to achieve status over humans, or ordinary behavior problems being bids for dominance have gone far beyond what the evidence supports. Worse, they have been used to support ineffective and inhumane training practices.
But there is a second mistake we can make: taking that rejection so far that we conclude dominance relationships among dogs simply do not exist.
That doesn't appear to be true.
In ethology, dominance refers to relationships between individuals—not to a personality type, a training philosophy, or “the dog who is most aggressive.”
Research has found structured dominance relationships in at least some groups of dogs. When clear social hierarchies exist, they tend to be tolerant or relaxed, with less pronounced rank differences and ritualized displays, rather than aggression.
That brings us to October's Research Bites paper.
Bakos and colleagues asked whether the social rank of dogs living in multi-dog households was associated with how those dogs behaved in a stressful situation involving their owner and a stranger.
Join us to learn what they found and discuss the possible implications for our work.
That’s what we’ll be unpacking in Research Bites on October 13 (also recorded).
Want to join us? Get details here: https://go.sciencemattersllc.com/research-bites-2026
