(really good idea to start this thread, IMO)
I think it's a huge fallacy to think you can fake "energy", or teach it. I totally agree that dogs feed off of handler's energy, especially those bred to work closely with people. Adopting a certain posture isn't going to change the chemical signals your body is putting out. If you're stressed, you're still going to smell stressed.
Dogs respond to "energy" in the sense that they respond to body posture and the chemical signals our body put out when we experience different emotions, but these aren't as easily manipulated as dominance theory trainers seem to think they are. You can't fake being calm- your body is going to betray that you aren't. You can try to make yourself calm, yes, but that isn't always going to work. Nor is it entirely necessary to have a well behaved dog.
I totally agree with the things said about both R+ training and dominance theory by others. R+ =/= never correcting a dog and letting the dog do whatever it wants and not being the leader in the relationship. It means not using physical correction. Very few R+ people don't believe in using verbal interrupters/verbal correction, and those that do are usually exception at controlling reinforcement (including functional reinforcement in the environment). I don't think it is good practice to advise people to never use any form of correction, ever. I don't think it is necessary harmful to avoid using physical correction, nor do I think it is necessary harmful to use physical correction on most dogs. For some dogs, yes, but not for all.
At the end of the day, dominance theory is based on several false assumptions:
1) That wolves relate to one another through a linear series of gradually increasing hierarchical relationships (alpha, beta, omega, etc) that are primarily rooted in the assertive displays/behaviors of the higher ranking animals, and include a lot of physical correction/manipulation
2) That dogs can be best understood through the behavior of wolves, since dogs were domesticated from wolves
3) That there are strong inter-species applications of this kind of behavior relationship- that humans can take the things a wolf does to enforce its social status and easily apply them to dogs, and have the dogs understand
4) That dogs relate to us similarly to other dogs, and will understand us relating to them as if we were another dog
The falsehoods of these ideas:
1) CAPTIVE wolves relate to each other in this way. Captive wolf packs are not healthy wolf packs. Wild packs do not work this way. In wild packs, there may be a linear hierarchy, but it is enforced by voluntary appeasement displays of the lower ranking animals, NOT aggressive displays by the higher ranking animals that force appeasement behaviors by the lower ranking ones (such as forced rolls, for example). Given the likely process domestication seems to take, I don't think it is a good idea to assume that captive wolf packs function more similarly to dogs than do wild packs. (see below explanation of how it is thought dogs were likely domesticated for why. Spoiler alert: it seems likely that the early stages of domestication were put into motion through voluntary contact of early wolves with humans, not intentional efforts to take them into captivity and tame them).
2) Dogs are not wolves. Current estimates place the beginning of the domestication of the dog around 14-20,000 years ago. Certainly by 14,000 years ago there were dog-like animals with skeletal markers that distinguished them phenotypically from the wolves of that time. Pretty much, this means their skulls and skeletons displayed the things we associate with dogs, and not with wolves. It is possible domestication started very recently after that (a fox farm study done in the 1950's by Belyaev introduced evidence for the assertion that the physiological and phenotypic changes associated with domestication (such as neotony, curled tails, piebald coats, and "friendly" temperaments) can occur very quickly, within only a few generations, by selecting for a lower flight distance, or the distance at which a person can be to the animal before they start showing signs of aggression). However, that would require a pointed effort of domestication, which considering dogs were the first domesticated animal it seems unlikely early humans actually set out to domesticate them- it wasn't even an idea that was likely to exist. The leading theory right now is that grey wolves at the time probably followed human camps, searching for refuse, which would have indirectly selected for animals with a lower flight distance. Over time, these animals grew more and more unafraid of people and likely were taken into human homes. Eventually, they were a distinct population from other wolf packs and changed enough from other wolves that there wasn't a whole lot of cross breeding among the populations.
- many thousands of years of divergence exist between dogs and wolves. In the early ages of domestication, it seems likely there wasn't any pointed effort, it was just animals finding a new ecological niche they could fit into and natural selective pressures being applied to those animals that differed from the selective pressures being places on wolves that did not associate with humans.
- the grey wolves that roamed the earth when dogs and wolves diverged are common ancestors between the wolves of today and the dogs of today. They are not the wolves of today. What determines the best fit wolf in the modern age is NOT what likely determined the best fit wolf before the divergence between wolves and dogs. Dogs and wolves diverged either at the beginning of the advent of agriculture or before the advent of agriculture. The world has changed drastically since them- the agriculture revolution and global take over of our species have changed what makes an animal best fit in their environment. In fact, for quite some time, one of the main things that made a wolf best fit for its environment was a natural aversion to humans. We have no way of knowing whether that was true before dogs and wolves diverged.
3) There is actually evidence to the contrary- it seems likely there IS NOT strong inter-species applications.
4) The very fact that dog-dog and dog-human aggression are not linked behaviorally is, I think, a testament to the fact that dogs understand we are not another dog and do not actually relate to us in the way they do to other dogs.
Yes, dominance theory training does work. Sometimes. With some dogs. You can build a very well behaved dog following it. Sometimes. Depending on the dog. You can also ruin a perfectly good dog by using it on a dog that isn't suited to corrections for one reason or another, and it isn't going to build engagement. It might not kill engagement if the dog is naturally highly engaged, but it takes a very specific trained to build engagement using dominance based methods where there is none or little to start. IMO, it relies too heavily on shutting down behaviors (in the scientific sense of the term "shut down", not the colloquial sense meaning "stop). I prefer to avoid purposely shutting down anything in my training. You can very easily create a shut down animal that doesn't do anything unless told to do so because it is afraid of the punishment. It's not the handler/dog relationship I want to foster with my own animals or create between owners and their animals. I agree strongly with the assertion above that it works for reasons other than why the people using it thinks it does, though. I agree strongly that using scientifically proven methods- such as operant conditioning- should be the backbone of any good training program, no matter what species of animal you're working with. I think that training that does not purposely follow operant conditioning is bad training, even if there are very small aspects I like about it.
I do think there are some small parts of dominance theory training that can be ultilized, but I also don't think the methods that are used to "create" these parts of the training are necessary to achieve these things. It's more that there are assertions I don't disagree with, even if I disagree with the methods used. I do think that a dog that has an owner who is in a strong leadership position is less likely to develop behavioral problems for environmental reasons. That doesn't mean they are less likely to develop behavioral problems that are caused by genetics. Most behavioral problems exist because of a mix of environmental reasons (the behavior has been accidentally reinforced, the behavior problem arose because the dog was never taught alternative behaviors that were more desirable) and genetic reasons (the dog was predisposed genetically to develop the problem). Sometimes, you can over ride genetic predisposition with good training before the issue rears its head. Sometimes you cannot, and you then have to wait for the behavior to show and them modify that behavior after it has begun to be shown. Sometimes, no amount of training/behavioral modification will over ride genetic predisposition/genetic involvement, and medication may be necessary in the long or short term.
In my mind, there's a difference between behavioral problems being linked to bad leadership by the owner and the problem being caused by the dog trying to take on the leadership role. I do not think that behavioral problems ever arise because the dog is trying to take on the leadership role. Or close enough to never that I feel comfortable saying that as a generalization, even if 1 dog in 2,000 that is true of.
In my mind, training and leadership are pretty heavily intertwined. Most dogs can be trained manners by rewarding good behavior with attention/praise and play and maybe the occasional food reward and withholding or removing attention/play/engagement when they are practicing behavior you do not want to see increase or continue. I can't think of anything I believe must be taught through the use of physical correction. Some form of non-physical correction, sure. You do need to let the dog know when it isn't doing what you want, but you can do that with verbal interrupters, a non-reward marker, and/or verbal corrections. I also think a very exceptional trainer could train a dog by just redirecting the dog before it gets the chance to do the behavior they would then have to correct, but I don't think it's plausible to expect every pet dog trainer ever to be able to do this. I think mostly professional or high level hobby trainers are the ones who are going to be able to actually create a high aceiving dog through this kind of training, and I think that to do so you have to aquire all the knowledge and experience you need prior to getting the dog or very soon after, have a well lain out training plan, and have that be your utmost goal and not speedy training/proofing.
Pretty much, good leadership is always doing a good job of telling the dog what is and isn't allowed, helping the dog make good choices so that it is practicing the things that aren't allowed as infrequently as possible, and working hard to make sure the dog understands fully what you do want before you introduce any kind of pressure (corrections) to training, as well as having as much skill applying pressure/corrections as you do applying reward.
I must have misunderstood or extrapolated way too much when someone in this thread indicated they don't ever use the word "no." I suppose that's everyone's prerogative, excluding a perfectly good word of the English language from their lexicon. But I must scratch my head when I read stuff like that. 
