It finally happened
We took off for Memorial Day weekend to our local favorite spot. We got checked in and took our dog over to the dog walk area. Our dog a Amstaff with already a flag(because of how she looks) on her ...
Forum Discussion
Dog Folks wrote:
Sorry Pawz4me. Your first link discusses the theory that dogs broke off from wolves earlier than thought. Not that they were never part of the same evolutionary chain.
Yes. Exactly. I don't understand your problem with that? The point is that wolves are not dogs' direct ancestors. They separated so long ago that they have little in common. Wolf studies (erroneous or not) provide little to no useable information about dogs.
The writer is NOT a scientist per say, although she has a degree in Geology. She is a science writer. There were no references to where this information came from.
Did you even read it? The information came from the people quoted in the article. DNA experts from Harvard Medical School and Pennsylvania State University. You know, people who would be considered experts by most reasonable people.
Your second link is a BLOG for crying out loud. That is NOT science, no matter what they call their blog.
Again, I have to ask if you even read it? Do you understand who was quoted? Did you not see the links to the studies in scientific journals? To the books published? Did you bother to follow any of the links, read any of the studies?
You understand that articles are more than the author? That they are the people quoted, the sources listed? I guess by your standards none of us should ever believe any newspaper article ever. Because no matter who is quoted or what facts are cited, the person who wrote the article is just a journalist?
A snippet from your third link:"Finally, AVSAB points out that while aggression
between both domesticated and wild animals can be related to the desire to attain higher rank and thus priority access to resources, there
are many other causes. What do you call this? Not dominance?
Not dominance. Wanting a resource is not dominance. Even a dog who wants one resource rarely wants ALL the resources, as often seems to be what people who espouse dominance theory seem to believe.
When two dogs meet, and the aggression arises, and a fight begins, just what are you going to call it? What is the reason for this, if not dominance?
Well quite obviously I would either need to observe the incident or have much more information before being able to make a guess or conclusion as to what caused it! To believe that two dogs reacted to each other in an aggressive way so it obviously must be dominance would be displaying profound ignorance of canine behavior. There could be quite a few reasons. Dominance wouldn't make my top ten list of possibilities. The first thing I'd want to know is the sexes of the dogs involved and whether or not they were spayed or neutered. I'd want to know what the owners were doing at the time of the altercation. I'd need many details. I certainly would never make a simplistic assumption about dominance. The only people I know who would do that are the folks whose total knowledge of canine behavior consists of having watched a few episodes of The Dog Whisperer. To make such a simplistic assumption would IMO do a great disservice to dogs. They are much more sophisticated and nuanced than that.
