Of Doors and Dominance......

Perhaps she is lagging behind to secure the rear? As an alpha that might also be her responsibility...you the human boss, has the front....why shouldn't she take the rear...no pack mate left behind and all that.

Wild supposition and all that...but typically the rear or last in line is a position of risk and responsibility at the same time. It's that way among a lot of social critters.

 I don't know. My aussie gives way to me and my husky when it comes to doors and going up and down steps. He will stop and wait for me to go through and I have a hard time getting him to go ahead of me (if I want to shut the door behind us, for example). My husky barges through all doors without a thought.

I don't think doors have anything to do with dominance, at least not to the dog.  Sure it can be a way for the human to prove dominance, but to me it makes more sense that we do this just to have the dog calm and composed and not dislocating our shoulders before every walk!  I don't really care if Kenya goes first or if I go first.  If she's too rowdy, I ask her to sit and wait while I open the door.  In the past, she has gone out with such enthusiasm that she's slammed into a halfway open door and then we are both bruised.  Again, I don't see it as a dominance thing at all, just a way of showing the dog that going on a walk is not all about pushing and pulling and charging around.

I totally agree with Liesje. Having 4 dogs (or even one large enthusiastic dog) rush a doorway (or gate) can cause personal injury. Making the dog wait until I get through gives me the room I need to open the device fully to make sure there's room for everyone and teaches the dogs self-control.

By the way, Cara, my alpha dog, almost ALWAYS goes last and I think Gina has a point in that it's to make sure everyone else gets through and no one lags behind.  

 Considering "in the wild" there are no doors, I don't put much stock in this door-dominance thing. I think it has a lot more to do with an individual dog's personality, regardless of their status or lack of status.

There is a specific order for the dogs to come in the house.  Marvin, then Molson, then Drizzle, then Blizzard and holding up the rear is Petro.  When it is time to come in the house, that is the time for Petro to go poop and then go pee, so I am always waiting at the door patiently.  Oh, it is the same order going out too...and yes Petro does lag behind and has to get a special invitation.  There is no dominance thing here just a different level of excitement for what behind the door, either going in or out...always something special behind the door.

For me it helps the dogs i will walk to be more calm before the walk (instead of rocketing out of the door)

Bottom Line: How does affect the dog the fact of you going first threw the door? ATTENTION, is not how it affects YOU but how affects YOUR DOG?

Some people think (as well as me) that the one who gets out first will be the one that tells how the walk is going to be

Maybe thats why i can get any dog walking nicely next to me even when the dog never had any kind of training in any area whatsoever

Your dog learns to wait for you to start walking instead of waiting for you to catch him up 

Call me silly, but when I read these stories (pertaining to dominance, pertaining to safety is an entirely different matter) it sends me into almost uncontrollable giggle fits. The person who originally came up with these ideas was surely a creative fella (and yes, it was likely a man, since the ideal "model" of research for decades was based upon the male sex of all species being the 'norm' to gauge against...thankfully times have changed). I mean, it's about as illogical as it gets, I have no idea how it caught on so well.

Nobody will ever convince me that this, or other such things are at all based in "dominance". Going out the door after your dog does not make the dog the "leader". I don't know how people ever get their dogs anywhere in a vehicle - do they get in the car, then tell the dog to enter, then get out of the car to shut the door and get back in?  Eating before your dog will not make the dog look at you any differently (unless of course the dog wants your food, which in that case they may give you all sorts of neat faces!). And so on.

 My dogs will go out of the door either before OR after me, depending on the circumstances. If I'm working around stairs or within the home with other dogs milling about, I'll send the dog ahead of me. Having a dog run down stairs behind you can be super dangerous, as can leaving the door open and risk any other dogs from getting out (especially those not understanding door manners yet). On the other hand, in other cases I don't want them rushing out certain areas. I have one girl who is fearful of people and other dogs, so for her best interests I tend to have her hold back until I look out the door first, then invite her along. This has nothing to do with dominance, but rather looking out for her. So while I agree there are functional reasons to teach these things, and I tend to work both. I'll usually ask if I want something specific, and if I don't then the dog may choose to go out before or after me, it doesn't matter. My dogs ALWAYS eat before I do, for breakfast and supper. Simply because I tend to feed myself last and later. Heck, they also often eat at times I'm not eating at all. I would hate to have to eat something every time I have my dog a treat....I'd be on some weight loss program quickly, as I'm not as active as they are.

 In terms of dogs. The dogs all pile in and out of the house together. They don't care about who goes in what order. Tequila tends to hold back and wait patiently simply because she doesn't care much for the antics of the Schnauzers, and she's smaller, so I consider her looking out for her best interests (she once had her eye dislocated from the socket from being run into or jumped into by a dog by accident, so I'm sure she's very conscious of movement around her now). Other than that it's whoever gets there first, goes out the door first. Same with coming back in.

Kim_MacMillan

The person who originally came up with these ideas was surely a creative fella (and yes, it was likely a man, since the ideal "model" of research for decades was based upon the male sex of all species being the 'norm' to gauge against...thankfully times have changed)..

espencer

So your ideology is affected by a bias of "machism vs women", could you show me a link where i can see that "model" was created by a man and based upon the male sex of all species being the norm?

Feel free to pick up any intro Social Psych text, or Sociology text, or even some Intro Psych texts. It's well documented, and very much almost common knowlege in academia. It's how human models were based from, it's how animal models were based from for a long time, heck, it's the main reason why they used male rats in research as opposed to female rats (the current reason that more males are used are different, such as hormonal, and male rats are still usually used, although more female rats are used in research now). The documentation is....well, everywhere.

 Directly from my Qualitative Research book, called Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology, by Carla Willig, discussing the male "model" in research starting around the 60's:

1. The male as the norm:

The vast majority of studies using human participants were carried out with male subjects. This was partly due to opportunity (since most university students were males, and research was conducted on university students for the most part - not part of quote) , and partly due to the assumption that men constitute the prototypical "human subject". As a result, findings based upon studies with (young, white, middle-class) male subjects were generalized to the population as a whole. In other words, (young, white, middle-class) men set the standard against which other members of society were then measured. This meant that when women were later used as participants, their performance and behaviour were assessed against the male norm and found to be wanting.

Whether you like it or not, or believe it or not, for many decades the world of science was mainly the position of men. And men (and in the case of animals specifically, males) were naturally the model to which all other things were judged. Women in science, in terms of research, were at first not studied, and when they were they were compared to the male model. That's why women scientists were so few and far between until the last 20 years or so. And if you look at the time period in which this happened the most, revolving around the 60-s-70's, was when the ideology of the dominance model originally arose, stemming from inaccurate data of artificially created captive wolf packs, I would be extremely surprised if any woman had anything to do with the origins of this ideology. It just wouldn't have been done at that time.

So, it seems I touched a (rather male) nerve here. That wasn't my intention, and I'm surprised I had to go into this detail here, since it's so well acknowledged by anyone who wished to look into the history of research and science.  Well, there was a small wink into the history of the "male model" in science, a 10-second social psych history lesson. Go team!

Kim_MacMillan

So, it seems I touched a (rather male) nerve here. That wasn't my intention, and I'm surprised I had to go into this detail here, since it's so well acknowledged by anyone who wished to look into the history of research and science.  Well, there was a small wink into the history of the "male model" in science, a 10-second social psych history lesson. Go team!

Not really, do you realize that "study" was performed by a woman in the 60's? a decade well known for its feminism and women burning bras on the street?

I dont know why you bring wolf packs to the discussion, the professionals that i know and support those ideas do not compare wolves with dogs

Blaming ideologies in the fact of being created by a male, sure is not a good way to demonstrate your credibility 

Yes, feminism arose in the 60's BECAUSE of the male model I was discussing! That is how feminism developed to begin with. It developed to rival this 'male model' that had been in place for so many decades. I'm not sure which study you are referring to specifically, there were several studies done regarding dominance in dogs that involved the same criteria that was discussed above, and those all were done by men. It's interesting to see there was a study done by a woman during this time, but I'm not totally surprised because of the feminist movement, many women were branching out and trying to make themselves known. And almost all of those studies relate, in one manner or another, quite closely to the wolf pack theory of dominance, and the hierarchy in which they live.

There are some members on this board who own dogs that would take charge of a whole household......I own a couple of them, they are not the laid back type of dogs, no, every chance they get they try to be controlling and bullying over the other dogs, and if strict behavior control wouldn't be exercised by me, they would try to bowl me over, also.......in certain instances it is very important to keep a developing dominance issue under check, even if it means controlling who goes through the door first.