Honestly, that dominance style of training isn't great anyway. It's long been debunked.
I much prefer, and get better results, by using positive only methods. No need to get physical with the dog, especially "to establish dominance", no need to smack a dog, hit with a newspaper, rub their nose in the mess if they toilet indoors when toilet training... those are old school methods based on bad science, and don't teach the dog anything good. All they do is damage the relationship and bond, and confuse the dog.
Dogs do establish dominance with each other, and can push boundaries with their humans at certain ages of development that need more careful/stern handling, but they don't want to be "alpha", don't want to dominate you, and there's no need to pin dogs down, pick them up, or physically punish them for something they likely don't even remember doing. Dogs live in the moment, so coming home and finding an accident on the carpet they did hours ago, then punishing them for it, doesn't help anything. Shouting, physically punishing, pinning them down or picking them up doesn't do anything to help. They won't even remember the accident, so punishing them hours later only confuses them, as do those old fashioned bullying type "tips". They only confuse the dog, and damage the bond and trust you want to develop.
Sorry
@sharkweek178 , this isn't a criticism of you, I have a lot of respect for you! And your fish knowledge. But I strongly disagree about the dominance nonsense. Dogs will assess each others level of dominance and sort a pecking order, but if you act like a calm leader and show them what you want from them, then reward them for doing it, they're much more likely to respect you as a leader, trust that you can handle scary or strange situations, and develop a stronger bond of trust based on understanding and communicating what you want from them, rather than shouting or physically punishing them.
The dominance, alpha nonsense is based on a study someone did on wolf behaviour, which was widely read and then interpreted by dog trainers, and resulted in a lot of bad training for a long time. The guy who did the study and then saw what happened as a result regrets it deeply, and did everything he could to counteract what he'd accidentally caused.
The flaw in the study was that while they studied wild wolves, they were wild wolves that had been captured and were living in a huge enclosure, but they weren't a natural entire wild pack. They were adult strangers to each other forced to live together. Then they were observed, and the scientists saw a lot of fighting and struggles for the pack to get along and dominate each other, because that's not how wolves live in the wild.
In the wild, the alpha pair are not related to each other, but find each other and become mates, produce cubs, then the cubs grow, learn to hunt, help raise the next batches of cubs that the alpha pair produce, and the pack grows. But the pack are all related to each other. They're an original pair, their offspring, and some stay with the pack once grown and continue to raise their nieces and nephews, hunt together as a pack with the original, alpha pair leading and teaching the younger ones how to work together to bring down prey, and bringing food back for the pack.
They don't tend to fight, or struggle for dominance the way the stranger wolves did in the study. The ones higher in the hierarchy will "punish" and dominate a member that's lower in ranking than they are if they step out of line, but it's usually subtle body language warnings, as with dogs, that can escalate to a bite or a fight if all the body language, staring eyes, lip curls and air snaps are ignored. They do have a pack hierarchy, but it's based on them being a family, and younger members don't try to take over the alpha position, since wolves tend to mate for life unless one dies, then the remaining one might find another mate, but not usually from their own pack. There are sometimes scuffles between lower ranking members as they mature if one is naturally more confident and dominant, or another is more submissive and happy to follow, just as with dogs, but since they've grown up together they've always known each other and tend to settle into their own roles, and accept if a younger dog is more leader-like and becomes more dominant than they are, and winds up higher in the pack hierarchy. Rarely leads to full on fights within a pack.
Full on fighting tends to be reserved for when unrelated packs are fighting for territory, or chasing off/attacking a lone wolf that has wandered into their territory, or wants to join the pack, and needs to establish its place in the pack if accepted.
Lone wolves tend to be young adults who are wandering, looking for a mate of their own to start their own pack. Or if a wolf has lost it's mate or the other members of it's pack.
Sometimes they find a mate from another pack, and establish a territory close to their original pack, and will keep the bonds they have with their family pack - remember all the stories and videos of dogs going wild when they see someone they bonded with but haven't seen for years? They remember scent and a person/other dog/wolf for the rest of their lives. So sometimes the two (or more) packs will work together and become a much larger "super pack", since more wolves working together can control more territory and bring down larger game, and compete more successfully against other packs.
Stranger wolves that have strayed far from their original packs do sometimes join an established family pack, and can be accepted by the pack. But they have to show respect and earn the trust of the alphas and other members of the pack, and can be accepted as an honorary aunt/uncle. Wolves don't like to be alone. That's highly dangerous for them, so a straying lone wolf is always on the look out for a mate, or to join a pack, since there's safety in numbers, they're more successful in a pack, and a lone wolf may be killed or driven out of the territory, so has to be careful and show respect, back off, but gently try to be accepted, which may take a while, and isn't always successful.
But they don't just randomly form packs with a bunch of unknown wolves, the way the strange and unrelated adult wolves were forced to live together for that study. This lead to a lot of fighting and un-natural behaviour since it wasn't a naturally formed pack, and they struggled to establish mated pairs, would fight a lot or kill the young of other members the way wild packs will sometimes kill the cubs of another pack if they find them, since that weakens the competing pack. So this study forced a large group of unrelated wolves to try to establish a single pack, but it doesn't work that way, and lead to very flawed results from the study, and the captive wolves did not behave the way wolves do in the wild as a result, and gave flawed results of how wolves behave "in the wild" that has long been debunked as a result of researchers studying actual wild naturally formed wolf packs.
Sorry for another essay, but you guys know I always type too much! I just get passionate about certain topics, and dog training, body language and dogs themselves are a deep special interest of mine! This isn't directed at you
@Naughts , I know you wouldn't smack, hurt or try to dominate your pup! I know you better than that.
Just sent me off on a topic I'm passionate about when the "pick up your dog often to show you're top dog" nonsense gets recommended. It's advice for the lurkers more than anything.
How are things going with your pup though,
@Naughts ? You haven't given us an update or photo for a while, and I'd love to hear how he's doing, how you're finding having a dog now, and see how he's growing! I can't have a puppy at the moment, and I'm puppy broody, so I love to live vicariously through friends who have pups and young dogs. Or any dogs of any age, to be honest!
My neighbour friend got a stunningly pretty and adorable cockapoo that's now 7-8 months old, and doing brilliantly, but she specifically asked to walk with me and Pixie, because she's known Pixie since she was a pup herself, and knows she's a good dog for a pup to learn from. Pix is a mature and naturally more dominant female, and technically elderly now that she's 11, and she's always been good about accepting and hanging out with other dogs, but won't tolerate it if a dog is rude when approaching her, knocks her about, or tries to chase her when she's not willing to play, and that she'll correct the pup with a warning growl, or an airsnap, without going overboard.
She acts like a mother dog in her corrections, firmly telling the pup to back off if it's too enthusiastic or rough with her, but won't hurt the pup, and will instantly forgive and forget if the pup listens to and accepts the correction, and then be friendly again with the pup if it's more respectful to her. So she's a good dog for helping a pup learn boundaries, especially if it's still in that young dog stage where they go mad when meeting other dogs and get too overexcited, or run up to strange dogs and bully, rather than greeting politely and inviting play.
She's so good at it, that I'm now considering and preparing to be a foster home for dogs. I think she'd accept it if the other dog is temporary and not 'taking her place', and I could get my doggy training and observation fix, while saving a dog from having to live in kennels until a suitable home is found. Much better way to assess a dog's character and training needs when it's in a home environment too, and especially with a well trained, confident and motherly type older dog to learn from. If she bonds with a particular dog, then it might wind up being a "foster fail" and end up with me adopting it.
But now we've inherited the house, have a large garden, and I'm still disabled but physically capable of caring for animals, I would love to do it. Not yet, have a lot of stuff to do before I could do it, but it's my daydream I'm working towards!
Pixie is too old for it now, but one day I'd love to train a dog to do search and rescue. Pixie would have excelled at that when she was younger, and spaniels and border collies (she's a mix of both) are well suited for that sort of work, while I want a worthwhile purpose to work towards. Wish me luck!