Fennell’s description of the method she uses is based on her understanding of Wolf Pack Theory, the idea that you can look at wild canines (the closest relative to dogs) and by understanding their social interactions you can start to understand the instinctual social structure and expectations of a dog living with a human family. But if you look carefully, underlying all of Fennell’s “Amichien Bonding” (which doesn’t even seem to be a word btw) are the concepts and practices of The Laws of Learning.
For example, her first practice of ignoring the dog after reuniting, no matter how boisterous or insistent the dog becomes, is actually practicing “Extinction”. By ignoring the dog when they are offering inappropriate behaviors she is using the laws of learning to teach the dog a new behavior pattern. Then she follows up these “bonding” exercises with classical conditioning protocols for lead reactivity, resource guarding, and whatever else is called for.
So is her method really working? YES! of course it is! Just because you label something with a new name and give it a grandiose “I understand wolves” explanation doesn’t change what she is doing. She insists on calmness in every out of control situation and she does this using positive reinforcement and avoiding physical confrontation. Is she actually tapping into the dog’s instinctual understanding of social interactions and expectations?… maybe, maybe not. But it isn’t doing any harm!
The idea that dogs equate toys with trophies of war is frankly a moot point. Fennell is concerned that the dog will “sense” their physical prowess and decide that they should be in charge of the family because they won some games of Tug. In reality, when scientific studies have been done on the subject of Tug causing dominance aggression, it was found that is doesn’t, pure and simple. Granted, not many of these studies have been done and more could be done to understand the dog-human bond.
As with her other exercises, if Tug is played with rules and used as a reward, there is very little chance it will cause a dog to become aggressive or give it the idea it is superior to it’s human. If Tug is played as an out of control game that is a free for all, then yes an accident might happen and even the high state of arousal the dog is left in could lead to inappropriate behaviors after the game.
