Alpha Dog(s)

Two dogs walk through an open door. As they cross the threshold, one growls at the other. There is a tussle but no teeth, no violence. One dog hangs back, but just for a few seconds as the other continues onto the porch. A minute later, they are barking side by side at a squirrel who is sitting on a telephone line. The dog who growls, who engages, who ends up going first, is the alpha dog.

A woman sits on the floor with her dog and scratches his ears. The dog looks away. When the woman gets up, she tells the dog to come to her. The dog continues to look away. He pays no attention. She repeats the command, her voice rising. The dog lies down and scratches his ears. The woman has failed to be the alpha in this relationship.

Although there are competing schools of dog psychology and dog training (these are almost always linked in both scholarly articles and popular forms of advice), the dominant ones are about dominance. To cite just one notable and influential example, Cesar Millan, the acclaimed “dog whisperer,” promotes an extreme—and extremely popular—version of dominance training in the aptly entitled “Cesar’s way.” His “Fifth Natural Dog Law says, “Dogs are social pack animals with a leader and followers . . . By the time a dog is an adult, it knows its pack position instinctively and is not going to change it. This is why you can’t turn a follower into a leader. If you put a dog like that in charge, it will become anxious and fearful because it won’t know what to do.” Millan and dozens of other internet dog training gurus insist that human “owners” or “masters” establish dominance by eating first, by insisting that dogs follow you through doorways, and even by practicing “submission holds” with puppies. In multiple dog households, there are, according to Millan’s website, “effectively two packs: the one that includes humans and dogs and the one that is dogs-only. The first task of the human is to identify the alpha, beta, and omega dogs and to “honor” the hierarchy: This means that the dominant dog always goes first—after all the humans of course. She gets fed first, gets her choice of toys or treats, gets her leash on for the walk first, and gets attention first. The emergence of the feminine pronoun raises an issue I plan to discuss in a future post, but the general message is clear: it is the job of the human to identify the alpha dog in any pack, and then to assert alpha-ness over that dog. The language of pack, of course, derives from an evolutionary truth that is also (merely) an analogy: dogs evolved from wolves. This observation is both incontrovertible and radically insufficient: it ignores centuries of active and purposeful human interference that has resulted in an incredibly diverse array of creatures that differ dramatically from each other and from their evolutionary predecessors.

The narrative of the pack survives into gentler forms. Once I eagerly read a book called something like “What Dogs Think.” It turns out, according to the book, that they mostly think one thing:  Where am I in this pack? “This made for very boring reading, but more importantly, for a depiction of very boring canine lives. I suppose dogs might spend every minute of the day assessing their place in a power hierarchy as if they were juniors in some particularly malignant law firm, but I don’t like—and therefore refuse—to think this is the case. While I might, some days of the week when I have not paid a lot of attention to my dogs, concede that dogs do not have a very developed sense of the past or future, surely when we think about what they think, we can imagine them lingering in the pleasures of the present: “I feel good” “interesting smell” “I don’t like rain.” “My back is touching my person’s hand.” Of course, I am writing as these simple sentences in words most dogs do not know; even as I avoid the more obvious temporal tags (“today,” “tomorrow,” “always,” past and future tenses) there is a faint sense of temporal order, of humanoid memory. “I don’t like rain” depends not only on the word for rain, but on a memory of a feeling, an ability to abstract and generalize from past to present. I realize that I do not know what dogs think, and that whatever those “thoughts” might be, they are not amenable to the grammar of human sentences.

When I took three weeks to observe my dogs, I found myself anxiously returning to the problem of dominance. Which among my dogs is alpha? Is it Sydney, the (female) dog who has been in the household longest, and who seems most interested in complex interactions with humans? Is it the upstart Zuko, still, in accordance with the most recent dog wisdom, unfixed, the biggest and most athletic of the four dogs, but also the youngest and newest? Is it Djinn, whose parti-colored good looks and outgoing personality inevitably attract the most attention from strangers? I was fairly sure it was not Kendrick, who rolls over and shows his belly in a prototypically submissive way, and who trails the other dogs on group walks, sometimes falling back as far as the cat who occasionally joins us (but is surely not an official member of the pack?).

What I found, during my observation is that the hierarchy, as far as I could tell varies with place and activity—and with human interpretation. Although my dogs act like the pack dogs in the manuals at certain times—like when the two young doodles fight for precedence as they cross the threshold from the house to the back yard at night—mostly they each have moments in their highly ritualized days when they seem to be first dog. I have chosen two regularly occurring scenarios to illustrate this sense of complexity: a recurring pool diving game and the linked but not identical rituals of naptime and bedtime. 

Into the water

Sometimes I joke/not-joke that we had the pool built for Sydney. From the time she was a puppy in the old house with its disintegrating pool, she has “known” to dive for floating objects and to return them to humans so they can throw them again. Thus, the household fetish of the green rubber bone. For years, she practiced her art solo, ignored by our aging border collie whose vocation (pacing the perimeter of the yard) kept her too busy for play of any kind. When, during her pool sessions, the humans inevitably got tired of the game, Sydney would “throw” the bone to herself, pushing it into the gentle current of our failing pump system to give herself room for a retrieving belly flop.

The new pool came with a bigger pack, collected in our home on the wave of the pandemic. We prepared by buying more rubber bones—red and blue—for the two new goldendoodles. Sydney’s longtime dog companion Kendrick—perhaps due to border collie genes—had never been interested, so it was three bones for four dogs. After an initial period of hesitation, the two goldendoodle puppies learned to go after whatever we threw into the water—and more importantly how to get out of the pool by the shallow end steps. 

For the first hot (dog) summer of COVID, days had regular shapes: my older son, Ross, and I would proceed to the pool around four. The dogs quickly learned this routine, alert to signs that we were preparing to swim. Gathering bones was of course an important clue, but it came late in that process of preparation. After a few weeks all I had to do was move towards the drawer where I keep my bathing suits; getting towels from the laundry room was a dead giveaway, as was, presumably, the smell of chlorine as we changed into suits. A pack would quickly form around the anticipation of pool time; within seconds of the first, sometimes unconscious signal, the three doodles dogs would head, shrieking and howling, for the stairs where the humans would try to avoid tripping over and catapulting to the bottom. The physical danger was nothing to the horror of the noise the doodles produced, individually and as an earsplitting chorus. Pool howls, as we call them, are unique in the dogs’ sonic repertoire; although the dogs are often loud when people come to the door, or when they are first released into the front yard in the morning, the cacophony of differently pitched barks that signal pool time are unmistakable and frankly unbearable. “Observing” the dogs during the pool howl, is a little like observing from within a tsunami, but I did notice during the last few times that the dogs take their distinct paths to the outside. Kendrick predictably trails the mob, contributing only intermittent deep “woofs.”  Zuko moans and twists, seemingly undecided about whether to run straight down the stairs or to rip the towel out of my hands. Djinn’s bark is the highest, but Sydney—here and elsewhere—always has the last word. Even when she is outside, the game does not begin until her final, sharp and explosive bark. 

While Ross and I may decide to swim or play pool basketball, at some point we almost always introduce a structured bone competition, in which the dogs are assigned points for various feats. At its simplest, a dog gets a point for every retrieved bone; they have to make it, bone in mouth, all the way to the shallow end steps. Ross announces the beginning of the game by raising the bone and initiating an NBA-style play-by-play. I offer color commentary. Ross usually begins with a player introduction: “Here’s Sydney on the left, the wily veteran. Can she add new accomplishments to her already fabled career, or is she simply too old? Here’s Zuko, the rookie challenger, who ran away with the last game. Can he find the consistency that makes a champion? And here is Djinn, the most unpredictable of the competitors. Will he show up today or will he refuse to play? In the play-by-play, Ross provides the details of the initial formation (“Djinn lines up by the basketball net, looking for the deep throw.”) I fill in with narrative (“You know, Ross, this reminds me of the time before the pandemic when Sydney found a green bone under the sago palm and emerged covered in bloody scratches), “and “human-interest” comments (“Zuko’s new training regimen, in which he actually eats his breakfast instead of daintily picking at it while the other dogs steal his food, has allowed him to dive further and longer”).

The three doodles seem to understand the game and to respond to when their names are mentioned. Zuko is usually the quickest off the mark, cannoning into the pool as soon as—of just before--the bone hits the water. He is not always accurate, though, sometimes missing the bone entirely and spinning wildly to locate it. Sydney sometimes, but not always, takes her time, running around the pool to find the best entry angles. At times this causes her to lose out entirely on the play, at others, her surveying behavior makes her ruthlessly efficient. Despite a full cataract in one eye, Sydney can always find the bone other dogs miss or drop. Djinn can be an instinctive diver and enter the pool as quickly as Zuko—or he can huddle shivering and abstracted on the side. When he gets the bone his mouth, he rarely heads for the steps to complete the play as the rules of the game have defined it. He often circles the pool, bone in his mouth, checking in with the humans as he passes them. Djinn is the only one who seems to know that the back stairs exist, often exiting that way. He very often concedes the bone when, or even before, the other doodles, especially Zuko, challenge him. Sydney rarely steals the bone from Djinn but often fights Zuko for it. Although she is not as fast a swimmer as he is, she works the angles and frequently is able to grab the bone from the side. In all the months of pool bone I have only seen Sydney lose a bone struggle once; she is willing to go vertical in the water—even to sink below the surface--to wrest the bone from the bigger dog.

Once the bone has been returned to the steps, and the points allotted, Sydney is fully in charge. On land, the other dogs give up the bone to her; she rushes with it in her mouth to the porch or the side of the house, shakes off the water, and returns the bone to a human thrower. When Sydney has had to sit out a game (ear infection, creaky back) the game stalls. None of the other dogs keep the bone in circulation. If the competition is to continue Ross and I have to get out of the pool to find the bone. Eventually we get sick of it and call time.

It is only the doodles who participate in this game. Kendrick typically wanders slowly out to the pool and sits on the edge of the hot tub in the sun. If the day is hot, he creeps closer to the edge of the pool, asking (I think) to be lifted gently in. Once in, he appears to like being carried around, with his arms around a human neck. The moment we lower him into the water, he is off to the steps and to dry land. Although a somewhat reluctant swimmer, Kendrick has perhaps the most efficient swimming stroke, his tail cutting beaverlike through the water as he makes a graceful beeline to the exit.

So, who in this story is alpha? In human scoring, Sydney and Zuko are probably tied for victories over the course of their careers, although Zuko is now winning at a slightly higher pace. The old guard is, as in the NBA, giving over to the new. Perhaps, then, Zuko is alpha water dog. Of course, the game literally needs Sydney. Is her bone distribution a sign of alphaness? Of superior intelligence? Of gendered service? Is she chair of this watery department or is she the female faculty member who brings cookies to meetings? Is she—perhaps a little projection here—the female chair who also brings cookies? As for Djinn, does he simply not get it, or is he thinking outside the box? Is his inconsistent performance a sign of what in humans might be called ADHD? Is he eschewing competition from a position of strength or is he submitting to dogs with stronger jaws and (pool) personalities? How do we interpret Kendrick’s refusal to play? As a submissive act in which he leaves the action to his more dominant packmates? As a strategic refusal that bends humans to his will? Is he just too high-minded for toys? Are categories of dominance useful in the complex ecosystem of our very crowded pool?

And so, to bed

What happens to the pack on land. Are we now, as it were, on terra firma as we look for signs of dominance and pack positioning? Dog training manuals point to the (human) bed as a key site where pack relations are negotiated and expressed. Certainly, there are signs of traditional dominance at work in the topography of our (fortunately) king size bed. Zuko, generally the gentlest of souls, growls at the approach of humans or dogs who approach after he is settled. But the training manuals do not hint at a complex choreography that seems to me, as I look closely, to be situational—even flexible. Part of this flexibility has to do with time of day. At night, the final placement of dog bodies is often but not always similar; Kendrick, the beta dog by most traditional definitions, lies at the head of the bed on a pillow, approximating a human position, with legs stretched down towards the foot. Sydney typically lies at my husband’s feet, head pointed away from the other dogs. Zuko curls around my right hip, Djinn around either my inside or outside knees. Assuming I were able to rise from the bed without disturbing the dogs to paint a still life or take a picture, these would be the positions realized for posterity and for analysis: Kendrick head dog, the doodles released to lower places, with Sydney apparently refusing identification with either the canine or mixed pack.  

None of this, though, takes into account the dogs’ constant movement and shifting. If I sleep through the night (not easy with a full bed) I will open my eyes to a different configuration. Zuko will leap on the bed, energized from some mysterious nighttime exploration. Djinn will follow more solely from Ross’s room where he has spent some portion of the night. Sydney will likely be under the bed; I will hear her tail thumping as I say good morning to them all.  Only Kendrick seems not to have moved. He remains fixed, inert, as stubborn as I learned to be in workshops on “passive protest.” If I wake during the night, the three doodles will be in yet different positions. If I stir, Zuko will whine form the floor for permission to jump up. Almost always, I will hear a snuffling sound as the bedclothes ripple to accommodate Sydney moving towards me to curl up on my chest. 

The bed comes to life differently during the day. If, as I have done perhaps most days since COVID, I am downstairs and use the word “nap,” the dogs stream up the stairs, overtaking me to wait patiently on the landing. Sometimes there is a battle near the top, but usually the streaming is silent, the dog’s appearance above me almost magical. Once in the bedroom, Zuko dives as if into the pool, landing close to Kendrick’s nighttime spot. His nap position never varies: curled like a black cashew, spidery legs tucked in, large head on my stomach, a peaceful sigh. If I am reading, he never disturbs my book or my Kindle. He is there for the duration of a nap or many chapters of a Victorian novel. He is the head nap dog. Kendrick, Sydney, and Djinn, take up their nap positions on Scott’s empty side of the bed. Sydney and Djinn, almost exactly the same size and shape, often lie on their backs, legs in the air, heads thrown back. If we read with the grain of dog manuals, they choose vulnerability. It is as if napping is a more relaxing enterprise than sleeping through the night.

Napping is also affected by the seasons.  My dog observation took me from late summer to early winter, light changing with the time of year and with the returning to standard time. Early in the experiment, the dogs—except for Zuko-- were more restless, moving sometimes to escape the glare of the late afternoon sun. Lately I awake from a nap to see the dogs on the other side of the bed, stilled to sleep in the pink light of a November sunset.  Although the napping dogs arrange themselves in relation to each other and to me, and although we can read this scenario and others I explore above through the classic binaries of submission and dominance, alpha and beta, I see and feel their attachments to other forces—the movement of the sun, the passage of time, the intricacies of place and habit. There is no easy alpha in this pack; perhaps there is no pack in the strict sense. Perhaps we should return instead to the idea that the dogs, and my family, and the cats, and even the furniture and the pool could be more aptly described as a household.