Dominance and Submission
It is believed by some that dogs establish a dominance hierarchy through aggressive play and roughhousing along a continuum of dominance and submission, although the concept of social hierarchies in dogs is unproven and controversial. It is important for successful socialization that puppies participate with their littermates in learning to relate to other dogs. Dogs learn to successfully relate to other dogs by keeping the peace, rather than by constantly fighting to reestablish this hierarchy.
Read more about this topic: Dog Behavior
Famous quotes containing the words dominance and/or submission:
“It is better for a woman to compete impersonally in society, as men do, than to compete for dominance in her own home with her husband, compete with her neighbors for empty status, and so smother her son that he cannot compete at all.”
—Betty Friedan (b. 1921)
“The great problem of American life [is] the riddle of authority: the difficulty of finding a way, within a liberal and individualistic social order, of living in harmonious and consecrated submission to something larger than oneself.... A yearning for self-transcendence and submission to authority [is] as deeply rooted as the lure of individual liberation.”
—Wilfred M. McClay, educator, author. The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America, p. 4, University of North Carolina Press (1994)