Language Matters: Why wolf pack terminology is bad for dogs

I live in a relatively small farmhouse with oodles of sled dogs (currently seven, but I’ve been lucky enough to share my home with 13 of the rascals in the past). With the (rather formidable) exception of the need to sweep up a lot of hair, it’s a wonderful way to live. The dogs mostly get along, playing and gamboling together in our large fenced yard and on daily hikes. They have a lot of fun with each other, and we—the humans in the house—have fun with them, too. Like pretty much any dog owner, I talk about my dogs with anyone who will listen: my poor guests generally hear a tale or two, as do my dog obedience class students, my family, my friends... I’m always talking about my crew.

My “crew”? Why not my “pack”? Whenever I talk about life with so many dogs, I’m very careful to refer to them as a crew. Or I might simply say my dogs. I scrupulously avoid calling them a pack, and I do this on purpose. Pack is a word weighed down with meanings and connotations and associations. It’s laden with some heavy baggage, most of which I want to keep far, far away from the canines I share my couch with.

Words matter

Language is not just the formalized way we express our pure, language-free ideas. Ideas aren’t born in the ether of our brains, arising without vocabulary or grammar in some amorphous thought-haze, only later getting a quick translation job into words and sentences so we can share them with others. Researchers who study human psychology and consciousness are quick to point out that, for humans at least, language and thought are truly inseparable. Philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett suggests that language lays down the tracks upon which thoughts can travel. Language both constrains thought, and is the foundation for it. We think in words, and language is inextricably tied up in how our brains look and work, from the time we’re very young. And although Dennett refers to the system of language including grammar, he also includes vocabulary: word choice. Words really do matter. A rose by any other name just smells different.

Pack terminology is problematic

Wolves, who share an ancestor with dogs, certainly organize themselves into packs. But there is a lot of misinformation about wolf packs fed to us, unfortunately. Wolf packs aren’t the same as what you see in a Disney movie or hear about on TV. The wolf pack is understood very differently by the general public and by those wolf biologists who study wolves in their wild, natural state.

In popular literature, a wolf pack refers to a group of wolves that hunt together and stay together. These imaginary packs aren’t a happy group, though. They seem to be in a constant state of some barely-controlled detente reminiscent of a B-movie prison or a contested border with razor-wire fences and armed, angry guards. Every member is scheming some kind of violent take-over and is barely kept in place through constant physical corrections from their superior pack-mates. Some kind of a social hierarchy is always included, but unlike human hierarchies such as company management structures or the armed forces, the hierarchies aren’t stable and non-violent. They’re always falling apart at the seams.

But for the very people who know the most about natural wolf behaviour, wolf biologists studying wild wolf packs? Things are a bit different. Wolf packs are families. There is usually a breeding pair who… you know. Breed. And then their puppy offspring, and possibly some older offspring too. While there is obviously some spats and squabbles (show me a human family without spats and squabbles, and…yeah, I won’t believe you), there is not a constant effort to both take over, and to quell uprisings. When wolves grow up, they usually head off into the great beyond—like a teen heading off to college, perhaps—and start their own families. Their own packs.

So where did the rather sad human idea about wolf packs come from? In part from our own psyches, very likely: hierarchies matter to humans, without a doubt. We simply can’t help interpreting the world through our own experiences. And from research on captive wolves, too. Captive wolf research has certainly inundated popular literature. Captive wolves are generally unrelated adults forced to live together in a constrained, unnatural state (not unlike a B movie prison, if I think about it).

What does this mean for dogs? When a 21st century English-speaking person hears the word pack when speaking of dogs, that word will almost certainly evoke the popular literature version of a wolf pack (inmates in battle for world domination), not the idea of a family just trying to make a living in the world. This is a problem in two big ways. First of all, we know that wild wolf packs are very different from the popular conception of wolves so the very idea of a constant battle for status is murky. But there’s an even bigger issue. Hold onto your seats: dogs aren’t wolves.

Dogs aren’t wolves!?

Dogs and wolves share an ancestor, and a relatively recent one—possibly around fifteen thousand or thirty thousand years (the actual timeline is a hot topic among researchers right now). And while it’s true that dogs and wolves can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, which is one of the ways that biologists define members of a species, it’s not true that they’re the same, behaviourally. The likelihood is that the common ancestor of dogs and wolves is now long gone—a friendlier, less fearful wolf was perhaps the source of today’s dogs. There seems to have been a split: proto-dogs on one side, evolving at first naturally and then being bred for increasing friendliness. And wild wolves on the other, evolving to become even more profoundly fearful than before due to increasing pressure from their main natural adversary: people.

So if they can interbreed, aren’t they the same? That sounds compelling, but in real life it’s trickier. Biologically, they can interbreed. But behaviourally, they are pretty different.

For example, wolves are uniformly predatory. Dogs are much more variable: some are happy to get their own meals to eat, some enjoy “predating” upon tennis balls only, and some have no urge whatsoever. Dogs tend to enjoy the company of humans, and I do mean close company (high fives to all the 50lb lap dogs out there). Wolves are a different story, even those who are raised with human company from birth. And when it comes to living in a tight-knit family pack, well, dogs and wolves diverge quite boldly. Studies of unowned dogs show that outside of the gaggles of googley-eyed males who gather briefly around a female in heat (ever hopeful), and groupings of adult friends who scavenge together and then disperse, it doesn’t seem that dogs do form packs. The family pack that is found among wolves seems, for dogs at least, to have gone the way of the dodo. This is not to say that dogs aren’t friendly! As mentioned, dogs tend to be social, enjoying the company of other dogs, and they almost always enjoy the company of their human companions. And like wolves, they will fight (i.e. use aggressive displays) to keep hold of valued resources like bones and comfy beds. But the adorable mom and pop pairs with puppies we see on greeting cards? That’s a human thing, not a dog thing. The likelihood is that “dad” isn’t out hunting kibble, coming back to his family and regurgitating it up for his wee ones. And when they’re a year old, those puppies almost certainly are laying on the couch chewing a bully stick of their own or playing with the poodle across the street, not out helpfully roaming with dad, scouting for kibble-beasts to help feed their younger sisters and brothers. Dogs are awesome; wolves are awesome; the same beast they are not.

Let’s put dogs in a new package

So, the pop literature understanding of wolf packs isn’t accurate. That in itself is unfortunate, but does that alone mean we should avoid the word? It’s so handy and brief, and rhymes with snack...and everyone loves snacks. But (unfortunately) there is even another problematic layer of misconceptions piled on top of pack. And this layer, this further misconception, is very bad for dogs.

Since the idea of wolf pack as a group of snarling, barely-constrained power-hungry predators reigns the popular culture, trainers who make use of outmoded, scary and painful training methods cash in on that misconception to lead us into buying what they’re selling (and upon consideration, it’s quite a natural fit, isn’t it?). If wolves regularly inflict pain and fear to sustain some ‘natural’ order, well then humans better do so, as well, is the thinking. And if every scheming member of a pack is always plotting to take over no matter the cost, then using painful or scary techniques—yelling or swatting, jerking on the leash, pennies in a can, sprays of water, collars that tighten to cut off a dog’s airway, or dig painful metal bits into their necks, or deliver electric shocks—well that’s a minor price to pay for maintaining order. These trainers are selling a rather scary falsehood: that if you, dog owner, don’t keep your pet wolves down and out, then they’ll take over and some horrible bloody pandemonium will result.

The bald truth of the matter is that there’s a better way to train dogs, now. The science of animal behaviour change has made fantastic leaps and bounds in the last decades. We can train dogs to do pretty much anything they’re capable of doing, and help fearful and aggressive dogs overcome their issues as well, all without hurting or scaring dogs. In fact, in the case of fearful and aggressive dogs, the research is in: hurting and scaring these dogs is dangerous and inappropriate, and leads to poor outcomes. It makes these dogs worse.

The myth that wolves live like B-movie prison inmates isn’t helpful in general, and the extent to which it allows painful training methods to proliferate is deeply troubling. And since I know that words matter, I invite you to start thinking about a group of dogs as anything other than a pack. How about an assembly? A class? A clutch, a posse, a passel, a community, a party, a retinue, a gathering. Your herd of hounds will thank you.

This piece was originally published on Dog International.

Kristi BensonMarch 31, 2022Comment