@GoToSleepBabyPlease
This is an interesting thought (doesn't solve the people-training-dogs-poorly problem though, as in my experience the effectiveness of lots of parenting leaves a lot to be desired).
My question would be, how do you enforce boundaries with a dog the same way as you would with a child? I'm guessing you don't sit your dog down for a chat about big feelings and how it's OK to feel angry but not OK to bite?
Boundaries with dogs are generally taught through a combination of different things, including
- ignoring bad behaviour and rewarding the good (wherever possible - for instance, this doesn't really work with self-rewarding behaviours). For instance, a dog that jumps up for attention should be completely ignored until they have all four paws on the floor - at which point they can have lots of attention.
- teaching the dog a behaviour that's incompatible with the undesirable behaviour. For instance, when a puppy is biting (as all puppies do - like small children, they explore with their mouths, and are teething) they should be encouraged to chew on a toy instead.
- making undesirable behaviours impossible to carry out. For instance, DDog went through a phase of raiding the kitchen bin. I placed a heavy weight in the base to make it impossible to tip over, and he eventually forgot that bin raiding was a possibility. In the same way, if you don't want a small child raiding the kitchen pan cupboard, you'll put childproof catches on them.
- teaching certain things in a slightly academic environment (for instance, teaching your dog to come back when called when you're in the garden) and then applying it in real world circumstances. For instance, whenever DDog got within a metre or two of a picnic I'd call him back and offer him a treat. Now, DDog is a bit too intelligent for his own good on occasion, so we did go through a phase of him running up to picnics, stopping a metre away, doing a handbrake turn, then running back to me expecting a treat
. We did have to reduce the frequency with which he received treats for not approaching picnics at that point, and now he's learned to give picnics at least a metre clearance without me asking (I would have taught him to leave more than a metre, but that would make our local park impassable at the height of summer and confuse him!)
- the issue of biting is quite separate to the issue of boundaries. Dogs rarely bite in anger - a truly aggressive dog is rare - but usually because they're scared (or in pain, or are just puppies - see above). Dealing with dogs (other than puppies) that bite is more akin to parenting a traumatised child than parenting an average child. The approach with scared bitey dogs is different - it's about changing the dog's emotional response, so that the scary thing is no longer so scary. There's also an element of teaching the humans about dog body language - biting is used as a last resort, and the dog will have used various body language to say it's not feeling comfortable. If the humans can recognise the body language earlier and stop whatever is making the dog feel uncomfortable, it will almost always prevent a bite.
To give an example, my dog was unsettled by a house move and went through a phase of being an utter twat (scared) towards visitors. I didn't have anyone around for 6 months, for fear that he would bite. In the end, with the help of a behaviourist, I taught him that visitors are here to play fetch with him - literally the best thing in the world to him! In other words, we changed his emotional response, so that visitors are no longer scary intruders, but are fun and will play fetch with him - brilliant! Sorry not sorry to all the tradesmen and others who have been forced to play a short game of fetch with DDog
All of this will be taught using reward based methods, not punishment. Rewards are usually treats, but can also be attention or playing with a toy.
I know there was that show on TV about how to train children using clickers and kiddie treats (chocolate buttons) but I think that's a pretty eccentric way to parent. And I don't think a dog would understand shutting away his favourite toy because he keeps barking at the postman (analogue of having to earn screen time etc as a child with good behaviour). I think by age 2/3 most kids have a better ability to reason than your average dog.
I'm not sure how dogs are trained these days, and find the idea of treating them as one would children quite thought-provoking.
The programme you're referring to (Train Your Baby Like a Dog with Jo-Rosie Haffenden) got far more flak than it deserved. Essentially, it just applied positive reinforcement training (which works on literally every species with a brain!) to babies, and it worked!
Adult dogs have the cognition of a 2-3 year old child, but for them to connect their behaviour with a consequence, it literally has to be applied within a few seconds, else they just won't connect the two. Without a shared language, we just can't communicate that their favourite toy is being taken away because they nicked ham from a picnic two hours ago!
In your example of barking at the postman, it's pretty much within the bounds of normal dog behaviour to bark at the postman as some breeds have been bred as watchdogs (if in doubt, bark at it!) and not everyone will want to train their dog out of it.
Dogs are also superstitious AF - the dog will firmly believe that barking at the postman has made him go away, and will have no concept that the postman would never have come inside anyway. They're no good at the difference between correlation and causation!
Good dog ownership is a lot like parenting in many ways. I provide DDog with guidance, boundaries, support to make the right decisions, rewards when he does, and love. He also sleeps in my bed, and eats better than I do - the sort of thing people are often referring to when they're pejoratively referring to dogs being treated like children - but that's almost completely irrelevant to training and behaviour.