Let me add what I know here about packs vs. families. First, interestingly enough, we do not fully understand bird pecking order. Bird A can beat Bird B for a good food spot, Bird B can beat Bird C for another spot... and Bird C can beat on Bird A for the first spot. So dominance is not clearly defined, and even in wolf packs it is acknowledged to be fluid. Some wolfs are dominant in some situations but not others.
WRT to wolf packs vs. families, I think this is a valid criticism. The claim is that most of our studies are done on wolves (or dogs) forced to live with a large number of unrelated individuals. This can cause behavior that wouldn't be seen otherwise. In the wild, wolves are
extremely shy. They generally only live in one family unit of two parents and one or more children. The father ranks over the mother, the mother ranks over the children, and the children rank by age. There is no question as to who is boss (note that baby wolves will still ferociously guard their food from everyone, suggesting that resource guarding is not a dominance behavior).
To demonstrate how different this is, I remember watching a wolf pack on APL where a female alpha wolf had killed her father to take control of the pack. Clearly this a night and day extreme, and one of the many things that makes me question dominance theory - how many people worry that their dogs may try to kill them in a bid for dominance?
I personally subscribe more to the idea that dogs see us as their mommies and daddies, which means that we automatically rank above them. That also doesn't mean discipline doesn't exist. This may be different when a large number of dogs live together, in which case pack theory may be more relevant.
To give another example, there are many "guard" breeds. A rottie may believe you are alpha, but still think it is her job to defend you. That's what they were bred for. At the same time, people will tell you that if a dog defends you, it thinks it's alpha. That doesn't make sense to me.
To use another example, I believe that insisting you walk through doors first has no analogue in the wild. How often are wolves squeezing through spaces single file the way we do for doors? However, I believe the discipline of telling your dog to position himself anywhere - front, side, behind - basically provides structure and rules, and that's why it has an effect.
Finally, we can take dolphins as an example, which are what Karen Pryor, the mother of positive training worked with. Dolphins are EXTREMELY rank oriented with each other, and often use force to maintain rank. Additionally cows are quite tough on their calves, in some cases even flipping them out of the pool for infractions. HOWEVER, you simply cannot train a dolphin with negative methods. Any kind of force won't work in the water, and they die of dehydration pretty quickly if they aren't fed regularly (they get their water from fish). So even though dominance and force are "natural" for dolphins, consider the amazing behavior we can train using different methods.
Okay, that's enough rambling for now.
