YSK: If service dogs come to you for attention, immediately locate their owner
Why YSK: Service Dog etiquette is to leave them alone as to not distract the dog's focus. If they're approaching you, they could be using a last ditch effort to save their owner. They will usually follow you, whine, bark, or otherwise try to grab your attention if this is the case.
My dog, who is NOT a service dog did this. My baby, at the time needed a bit of tough love, so we put him alone in his room, in the dark. He cried and cried and we planned to check up on him after a few minutes. The dog came and scratched on our bedroom door, pushing it open as we left it partly open. He jumped for attention and when I thought he wanted to be taken outside, he led me to the baby's room. He pushed it open and let out a quiet whine while looking up at me and followed by sheepishly looking into the baby's room. I could tell he was concerned for the baby. Dogs are awesome. Service dogs are just amazing. We don't deserve them.
Sorry I'm not a parent so I don't know about these things, but for what does it help to put a baby alone in a dark room?
I would probably be paranoid that it develops some random issues from stuff like that and carries to adult life but maybe that's just some hippie bullshit.
The whole concept of “tough love” is nonsense and usually an excuse for child abuse. It’s of no value. Not saying this instance was abusive but it doesn’t really help either from what we know about child development.
I make no claims abuse/no but my own parents did this. Something about the fact that kids need to learn to self-soothe and not expect parents to just immediately handle every problem when they make a lot of noise.
Since you wanted context, it was well past his nap time. We had a schedule to help set his sleeping pattern. We paid a professional to guide us with setting a baby's nap and feeding pattern as well. Clueless and loving parents can sometime fall for every single cry. It's not enjoyable for us to let our baby cry alone, but it has to be done at times.
Following baby's desire whenever and wherever, would lead to fatigue for parents and child.
I suggest not to draw into conclusions too easily. It's easy for the world to label everything as abuse now adays.