Do I need to act like an alpha dog?

A valuable, scientifically funded response to the dominance alpha dog theory. Do I need to act like an alpha dog to my dog?  There's no denying an animal needs to be able to listen to us, but we would need to ask ourselves what relationship we want with that animal.  And why is it doing the behavior we're asking for? House rules such as not sleeping on the bed,  the dog can eat after we had our dinner, the dog is not allowed to walk through the door before I do etc. These rules do not work because your dog things you're the boss. They're working because you're putting in place consistent rules and expectations.  And you're creating a predictable environment, where the dog knows what is expected of it, what the household rules are, in a very similar way than we might raise our children, to be honest.  It's just about consistency, predictability, and rewarding appropriate behaviors. The dog won't be interpreting any of those behaviors as you being the alpha, or the leader of its pack, because you eat first or you go through a door first. 
That's just not how social learning works in dogs. But it will just have a consistent expectation of what its role is and what is expected of it, in terms of its own behavior.  And it will learn that, and so that That consistency and predictability can be very useful.  I have copied this text from a video which is part of a Q&A session of the MOOC on Coursera called "The Truth About Cats and Dogs" from the Edinburgh University, an online course I took early this year. I think the response of the teachers to a question related to the alpha dog / dominance theory is so important and relevant to my view on dogtraining, that I wanted to share it online. Interested in the course? Check out this link. It's for free!