Interesting conversation.
I am a person who thinks it is quite harmful to try to relate everything dogs do to wolf behaviour. I also get annoyed when people use wolf behaviour to describe dogs in one context, and dog behaviour to describe dogs in another, just to suit what they are trying to push forth.
Coppinger's studies are fascinating studies when it comes to discussing and studying the domestic dog. If you've read him, whether or not you agree with him, most will agree it's a quite intriguing hypothesis. If you haven't read him, and you're truly interested in the wolf/dog/evolution perspective, you should read Ray and Lorna's work. It's truly fascinating.
I think there is an importance in studying wolf behaviour to attempt to better understand our canine companions. But I also think we need to draw the line between saying dogs and wolves are the same, and learning the evolutionary procedure to what made the dogs we have today, and being able to compare AND contrast the differences between them. And the unfortunate thing is that there is so much invalid WOLF information out there it's hard for new people to try to begin to understand the relationship between dogs and wolves.The line we need to draw is between learning about where some of our dog's behaviour comes from, as WELL as how it has changed, from its ancestors. Not using wolf behaviour to try to work with dogs, but to use wolf behaviour to try to see how dogs have changed, to better allow us to work with dogs - as dogs, not wolves.
In some ways dogs have changed very little from wolves (metabolism - dogs being firstly carnivores, as one example, although behaviourally they evolved as scavengers) . In other ways they are worlds apart. Behaviourally they are worlds apart. Physiologically they are worlds apart.
I will never understand the ideology that any human can ever replicate dog behaviour, not to mention wolf behaviour. And not to mention that so many of the behaviours that humans try to emulate as wolf behaviours are TOTALLY incorrect behaviours! They make dominance look like a static, concrete, status-symbol, when in reality dominance is an extremely fluid happening. A prime example is alpha rolling - it's so over-rated in the WILD wolf community that most people don't even realize that a "true" alpha roll is almost ALWAYS a voluntary act by one animal, it is virtually never, ever, a forced act put upon an animal by another. The animal being "rolled" does it of its own choice, you will rarely ever see physical contact occur in a true "alpha roll". Even then, even IF dogs did perform some of these now know to be invalid behaviours to each other, the key point is that it happens between conspecifics - the same species. I do not for one moment think that dogs are dumb enough to think that we are dogs, even when raised from puppyhood by humans.
In fact we can study feral dogs. In Coppinger's work he did just that - studied the Pemba village dogs as a contrast to the old "wolf" analogies. In some places village dogs are extremely common, and such is the way of life (and it is thought by a lot of people that THEY are the originators of the domestic dog, the prototype of the dog, an evolutionary step between the wolf and your poodle). You won't find many feral or village dogs in the Western World, or even in European areas because we humans now classify them as "strays". But in many parts of our world, dogs (yes, dogs, not wolves) are coexisting with humans in a way that some people don't even realize. They are there for the studying, more people just need to study them.
Personally I feel that it is only to the dog's detriment to try to directly apply wolf behaviour to dog behaviour. We study wolves to better learn about where our dogs come from, and to track an evolutionary path from there to now, and to understand the basis of "some" behaviour of our dogs, but also to realize how even those similar behaviours have changed over time as the dog developed. It helps to understand the beginnings if we are to understand the current, and why it is the way it is, and how it's changed from the original form/function of that behaviour. If we want to learn dog behaviour specifically, though, we study dogs. As they will tell you the most about the domestic dog species. Just as wolves tell you about the wolf species (how many people on here have ever said "Well, the wolf got its behaviour from............"? Not too many, because people realize that to learn about wolves, you study wolves, and use the past ancestors as a guide, not a recipe).
Kim MacMillan