Tug Of War: Your Dog Won't Think Less Of You If You Lose
Pet care books often lag quite far behind the times, in terms of what we know (or theorize) about domestic animal behavior and needs. That's being charitable, of course, since probably a bunch of them are just making stuff up. One of the more pervasive myths about dog training that you're likely to encounter if you pick up a book on the subject at your local PetCo is that tug-of-war is a dangerous game. Lose against your dog (Canis lupus familiaris, or Canis familiaris, depending on your taxonomic bent), the books will say, and you also lose his or her respect.
This isn't at all the case. For one thing, it's pretty hard to lose the respect of your dog.
I can't speak for the Jolly Olly Man though.
It has been shown, by a team of researchers from the University of Southampton, that far from taking a "win" in tug-of-war as a sign that their opponent is slipping and that it's time to take control of the household into their own paws, dogs are more obedient following play bouts with their humans, even if it is tug-of-war, and even if the dog has won or been permitted to win1.
Maybe (and to the best of my knowledge this link hasn't been made conclusively) the tug-of-war behavior with dogs stems from social meat-tearing, a regular component of feeding among packs of wild canids. In such a situation, the goal would not be to remove the meat from the mouth of the other dog, but to split a hide into readily consumable pieces.
Packs of Lycaon pictus, the African Wild Dog, will surround their prey and play a deadly tug-of-war with the doomed beast, each dog pulling at its skin from a different side. Once the prey has been killed, the process is repeated to dismember it. All of this goes a lot faster with more dogs2, arguably making it cooperative.
Anecdotal evidence supports the idea that bigger, stronger, more dominant wolves (Canis lupus) will permit younger, subordinate wolves in the pack to “win” food from them in tugging competitions, particularly if the food item belonged to the younger wolf in the first place (as, one might argue, most dog toys belong to the dog). This loss in no way undermined the stronger wolf’s dominance3.
So go ahead. Bond with your dawg over some rope, and you can both imagine it's elk intestine and feel super rugged.
Rooney NJ, Bradshaw JWS (2001) An experimental study of the effects of play upon the dog-human relationship. Applied Animal Behavior Science, 75:161-176
Courchamp F, Macdonald DW (2001) Crucial importance of pack size in the African wild dog Lycaon pictus. Animal Conservation, 4:169-174
Packard JM (2012) Wolf Social Intelligence. In: Wolves: Biology, Behavior and Conservation. Maia AP, Crussi HF (eds). Nova Science Publishers, Inc.