zombie or no
be the alpha dog. get down on all fours, bark loud. go for the bone with your mouth. be like Belker.
I know this is an old thread, but I want to point out that dominance theories in animal (especially dog) training are considered outdated by modern behaviorists.
I agree that “drop it” is a very useful cue to teach, starting with something of lower value (i.e., that the animal doesn’t particularly want or even like holding in their mouth) and moving toward something awesome/delicious.
I raised and trained bird dogs for many years. It is very important for a competing bird dog to maintain a high tail and head and not show any signs of cowering. They still have to be trained and obedient. I have always used a minimum of force when training and like to keep training as a positive fun thing for the dog. The exception is when they show any sign of aggression toward me or other dogs. I find big differences between breeds and big differences between individual animals within the same breed. I always fed my dogs out of the same bowl or food dish and if one of them growled he got rapped with a belt across the shoulders. Most of the time once was enough. I had a brittany spaniel that was fine around me but could not be trusted with the wife or kids when I was not around. I couldn’t correct him because I never witnessed him misbehave. I felt he was dangerous so had him put down. I don’t buy some of these modern tecniques, I feel the dog has to know we are the masters at all times. I really do like Ceaser the dof whisperer, I feel he is about the best behaviorist I have ever seen, I think a lot of his competitors are jealous of him. To me he doesn’t use any tecnique, he just understands how dogs think and responds accordingly.
Did you read any of my links? The dominance theories espoused by Cesar Millan, “The Dog Whisperer,” have been pretty widely discredited.
Basically, if you have an aggressive dog, showing him aggression back just escalates his behavior. Dogs can’t read human body language effectively, so trying to use it to communicate with your dog is futile at best, and dangerous at worst.
An animal trainer’s best tool is trust. Attempting to physically dominate an animal breaks down that trust. Another social carnivore is a lion. Would you try and train a lion using dominance methods? The reason animal trainers in zoos use positive reinforcement is because it works, across different species, and for different individual animals. Aversive stimuli, like physical dominance, is just unnecessary.