I've raised puppies and I've trained dogs. I am currently raising my child. I see so many similarities between raising children and dogs well. However, I have recently decided that raising children is WAY harder than raising dogs. So why can't people seem to teach their dogs anything? Are these people raising children who run amock? Do they not teach their children how to behave? I have a hard time believing that all of the people who dump dogs at shelters (considering the millions who end up in shelters every year) are poor parents. Our society would cease to function if that were true! So why do people give up on their dogs? Are they just ignorant of how dogs should be raised? Ignorant of what can be done to increase the likelihood of a dog behaving well? There are plenty of books out there, plenty of websites to tell them what to do. Do they just not think about looking? Or are they too lazy to look for help?
Raising children really is harder than raising dogs.
Raising a dog well means training, exercise, training, love, training, and some more exercise. If you exercise a puppy well, you can give him a chewie bone and expect he'll be content for atleast an hour while you do something else. You can put a puppy in a kennel to keep him out of trouble while you do other things. Give him a stuffed Kong, and he'll be fine.
If you train a puppy well, using love and kindness and rewards (we call this positive reinforcement), you will have a grown dog who is well trained, happy, and able to go most places without issue. Dogs are basically programmed to want to please us. Even the most independent of dogs will respond to good training and to a certain tone of voice. They understand when you are displeased and will do their best to accommodate your wishes, even if they don't often understand what you want.
Children, now, are a completely different matter. Children, it seems, are preprogrammed to constantly try for independence. While this is a good thing when considering that you are raising an independent person, it makes training them somewhat problematic. They don't inherently want to please, as a dog does, and they will continually repeat the same behaviors just to see if they can. Being extremely stubborn is a good trait for a parent since we have to out-stubborn our kids. Explaining to a small child that a behavior is not allowed is not easy. It's infinitely easier to redirect a dog into an appropriate behavior than it is to redirect a kid.
Is it just simply that society expects parents to take care of their kids and not dump them on someone else? Do we as a society accept people dumping their pets? I think so. No one wants to upset anyone so the truth is never told. Shelters should have a sign on the front door giving the statistics of the number of dogs they take in, both strays and owner surrenders, the number of dogs they adopt out, the number of dogs they send to rescue, and the number of dogs they kill. Something has to make people think and atleast the straight facts might make a few people turn around and go back home WITH their pet. Are shelters afraid to share this information? Maybe. Perhaps they are afraid it will reflect on them and the job they are doing. Maybe so, in some cases, but in most cases it is the irresponsible people who are the root cause of the entire problem.
