Whatever their disagreements about the particulars of these issues, none of the researchers I spoke to said that any of this should be taken to mean that dogs, as a species, want to dominate humans. Serpell suggested that this idea derives from a “semantic problem to do with confusing ‘dominance,’ which is about relationships, with ‘dominant,’ which is a behavior — in other words, behaving in a dominant way.” He said, “The notion that you should behave in a dominant way toward your dog, for example, to avoid it trying to assert itself and push you further down the hierarchy, really doesn’t seem to be an issue with dogs.”