"Truly the dog world is full of formidable women, I’ve never felt so unable to cope in the face of these quite scary people. I dare a dog to misbehave in the presence of these women. The cultures I have been looking at, much to my surprise, have been heavily populated by women over fifty. A very interesting age-gender breakdown, plenty of other people there, but there’s a strong kind of leadership core by women of certain age, which I’m pleased by because that is not typical of communities of authoritative practice that we’re used to describing."
i have noted that awhile back, not just here but on other dog websites that have good volume of inhabitants, that a larger percentage of the people who post are women. i have never ascertained an age thing... but i do wonder why so many more of the people who post on dog forums are women then men?
getting back to AR behavior, i have wondered while making the OP whether or not i am AR when it comes to walking my dogs? i started to take a ski pole with me to teach them to walk behind me - and it worked..... but i also found the pole useful, on occasion, to block other dogs who have their tails stuck straight up in the air (an assertion signal) from charging my own dogs (as well as preventing my dogs from reciprocating because they started to pick up that charged energy off the other dogs)...... and so now, i ALWAYS take the pole.... is that being AR?.