Never dominance roll your dog!

Let this be my apology to Dobie. Dobie, I’m so sorry I was naive enough to take advice from a Petsmart trainer who told me to flip you onto your back when you misbehaved. I’m so sorry I did this dominance roll to you in the past. And I’m so incredibly sorry I allowed others to dominance roll you when they had no right to do so. It will never happen again, I promise. I will never let anyone bully you again.

What is a dominance roll?
When you physically put a dog on his back, pin him down until he stops struggling, adverts eye contact and submits to you.

Why is this completely wrong?
Because in nature, pack leaders don’t do this. Within dog conflicts, the more dominant dog doesn’t force the lower-rank animal onto his back. The more submissive dog rolls over to expose his stomach by his own will. When you flip a dog over by force, you are not teaching the dog to submit to you because you are the pack leader. Infact, you are communicating to them that you are a crazy dictator to be feared. The dog may still love you, but you lose his respect. You are breaking the bond of trust between you and your dog. Instead of learning submission, the dog is learning to fear you.

With a pet dog, you might never notice the difference (which explains why it is still widely taught in the pet training world). Since you’re not giving him commands and working as a team, you’ll never know whether or not your dog respects and trusts you. With a working dog, it is as clear as day. A dog that heels because it must has no bounce in his step and no wagging tail. A dog that heels because it enjoys working with his owner has exuberance and excitement in all his movements.

Even though I have not dominance rolled Dobie in a long time, I still feel the need to get this information out on my blog and apologize to him. Hopefully another puppy will not be subject to such rude handling from humans. After I learned more about dog pack behaviour, I began to notice that Dobie will expose his belly when I tower over him and say “bad dog”. He also licks after he is corrected for mouthing. In order to build trust with him again, I always praise him happily when he submits on his own accord. There are no hard feelings to being corrected and in time I hope to win his trust back.