this is a wonderful read for you dog companions who never experienced their dogs in the light of
doggy dominance that so pervades dog training thinking out there.

i've never had an ''alpha'' dog -- oh i've had rambunctious dogs, velcro dogs, lovey-dovey dogs, -- but never a dog that exactly described ceaser and the rest of the dog authorities descriptions.

and my last dog -- who i loved more than anything convinced me -- but i've never said much -- cause it was just a suspicion.

what a relief this article has been.

http://baywoof.com/2008mar_alpha.html

To Friedman, the dominance theory is a convenient construct, an inference about how or why an animal behaves as it does. This sort of thinking can be helpful in identifying constellations of behavior, but it can also retard true understanding.

Unfortunately, such constructed explanations cannot easily be proven wrong. This seems especially true of canine dominance, where any observation that contradicts the theory is explained away with a new unproved assumption. For example, if a lower-ranked dog in a pack is observed to get priority access to an important resource, dominance proponents invoke “temporary rank reversal” or “the order is in flux lately” – or some such idea – as an explanation.

In the absence of any real research on social dominance in dogs, advocates borrow and expand from the captive wolf world. Discrepant spins on dog social systems abound. Depending on which training book you read or popular seminar you attend, you may hear that dogs form:
Linear dominance hierarchies, in which order is maintained by superiors actively exerting rank over subordinates (e.g. pinning, bullying, standing over);
Linear subordinance hierarchies, in which order is maintained by displays of appeasement by subordinates toward their superiors;
Non-transitive hierarchies, in which relationships within any dyad (pair) are fixed but out of which no overall hierarchy can be built;
Contextual dominance arrangements, in which the nature of a disputed resource determines who wins;
Hierarchies that include humans; and/or
Any number of other interesting but unsubstantiated dominance theories.