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[Oaktree]

Probably the easiest way to get caged animals or goblins into an "arena" for militia training is to pit them from a higher level.  Doesn't require hooking up the cages to levers, and your haulers can move most prisoners without issue.  It's generally a good idea to put a hatch on your pit location so that pit denizens do not scare passing civilians or haulers bringing more prisoners to be dropped in.

[Jacob/Lee]

Also: be careful when dealing with thieves. They'll try to break away from the dwarf pulling them and will immediately run for the door. But they will stab someone trying to fight them, and even those cheap daggers can mangle or paralyze a dwarf.

[SixOfSpades]

And regarding dogs - I use them primarily for quick leather, meat and bones production

Indeed. Quite often, the best way to weaponize a war dog is to turn it into leather armor and bone bolts.

take 10 of your dwarves who have had some kills, preferably notable, and look@ their skills.  give them a weapon according to this.  let them train for years.  i had one of my speardwarves recently kill an entire ambush solo, and he got bruised once in the leg.

Variation #1: Create a Miner army. Mining is classed as a combat skill, is nearly effortless to train (you almost can't not have any Legendary Miners by the end of your 2nd year), and the way picks are coded in the raws, they're pretty much the equivalent of lightsabers. Take high-level Miners, turn off their Mining labor, put them in a squad, assign them armor, shields, & picks. Wait for goblins. Laugh hilariously.
Variation #2: Wait for a High Master Armorsmith & Weaponsmith. Weapons & armor get very nice bonuses if they're masterwork, hits that would normally sever nerves & tendons now only cause bruises (on you) or sever limbs (on them).
Variation #3: Do both. My duke is not impressive: "he is rarely sick, but he is flimsy." But he's a Legendary Miner, equipped with masterwork steel everything. I was afraid there might be some goblins out beyond the gates, and my duke was the only military I had, so I poked him out to take a look. Five ambush parties. He took them ALL on, even two groups at once. He got fifteen kills, the rest fled the map before he could catch up. He suffered three bruises, all of which healed before he even got back inside. This much overkill inspired me to make my duke my only dwarf allowed to fight with a pick.

I have no idea how to take "prisoners". I understand I have to use cages. Is it possible to use useless dwarves and slaughter them for my amusement?.... Actually, i'm going to go do that right now. What other things can I take prisoner and how? I have an army of 20 dwarves, but 5 are currently useless marksmendwarves because I have no quivers.

1) Make the only access to your fort a long, narrow tunnel filled with cage traps. Just about any creature* that steps on a loaded cage trap will be swallowed up by it to be "safely" disposed of later. Read the wiki on cage traps & their use.
* Your dwarves & their animals, and traders & their animals, are immune to traps, as well as kobolds and some extremely nasty things.
2) Do NOT directly attack any dwarf, unless you want your entire population to quickly self-destruct. If you want a dwarf to die, then I got 1000 ways to kill 'em, but telling your military to attack 'em ain't one. Look up "loyalty cascade" on the wiki.
3) Marksdwarves equipped with crossbows but not quivers/ammo will beat their enemies with the butts of their crossbows and gain Hammerdwarf experience.

[jsm]

If a thief is found by one of my guard dogs, do they run away, or still proceed to rob my fortress?

[Astrid]

They run away. Or slaughter the dog and Then run away.