Would you put a shock collar on a baby? I sincerely hope the answer is no. If it isn’t, then you have a problem I can’t fix in 500 words. Would you do it to a dog? That answer may be different, yet ironically, some people treat their dogs better than, or as a substitute for, their children.

Imagine your family brings home a new baby. You decide one day after the child had wandered off into the street, that you were going to teach your new family member the boundaries of your property, in order to properly confine the child within the same set of societal norms and safety precautions that you were so carefully raised under.

Would you then strap an electric collar on the kid and walk it around the property, smacking it on the nose whenever it got to close to the street? Perhaps let the little one loose one day and keep a curious eye as the explorer wanders across the lawn toward the boundary, receiving a startling shot, and permanently scarring the child with an unreasonable fear of grass and an attachment disorder.

We all sincerely hope the answer is no.

But I don’t have a two-year-old or several; so the idea of putting a shock collar on a baby seems odd to me, but have a few kids and maybe that’s enough to change your opinion. Shock collars on dogs, however, seem to be more acceptable; although my dog’s kind of like a two-year-old, so there’s a grey area here.

I talk to my dog like she’s a two year old; it makes her happy when my voice gets all high and squeaky. I treat my dog like a two-year-old; she’s received more than a few timeouts. But my two-year-old wanders, so we bought her an electric collar. It took her a month after her first shock to get up the courage to go out onto the grass alone again. And so the collar went unused.

She is the timidest, friendly ball of happiness you’ve ever seen; I’m not worried about her harming anyone. I’m worried she’s going to wander into the street and get too friendly with a car. She’s not used to living so close to a busy road.

She’s a country dog, our recent move to a more densely populated town has been a difficult change for her. But at the end of the day, I throw one on my dog and let her loose so I can sit inside and write while she plays outside, with no worry of her accidentally wandering into the road.

So is it a problem that I put a shock collar my two-year-old because it certainly bothers me? But not enough to do anything permanent about it, like get off my ass and watch her so we don’t need a shock collar.