It occurred to me as I was posting in another thread that I hadn’t spent much time in OT recently. I have several good friends who are TBers both local and elsewhere and had wanted to post something about my daughter’s new service dog.
But to tell it right, it’s a
very long story, it’s very emotional, and I’m lazy.
In order to properly appreciate the magnitude of what this dog does for my daughter and our family, I have to set the stage a bit by telling what led us up to this point. I’ve mentioned it before here, but it’s probably important to tell it again to set the context for the dog.
My daughter seemed perfectly normal at birth. She was fussy, but my wife had taken great care to do everything right, and she appeared to be perfectly healthy. I took a leave of absence from teaching to be a stay-at-home dad. When she was eight months old however, she started having seizures, and since then has been hospitalized many dozens of times as they have proved difficult to control at times. Later on we discovered that the developmental delays she was experiencing were also evident of autism, and her condition in this respect has worsened considerably. Now eight years old, she functions at the level of a two-year-old in most respects. While she is at times the sweetest child you would ever meet, charming perfect strangers with hugs, she can also throw screaming and physical tantrums that are reminiscent of scenes from the Exorcist. I get kicked in the crotch about once a day, (usually inadvertently). I still am a stay-at-home dad, but it’s different now. My daughter will likely never be capable of living independently. My wife is an electrical engineer, so we can afford for me to stay at home which is important. I guess you could say I have “job security.”
I say all this not so much to plead for sympathy, but to emphasize that when I say in reference to getting our service dog that “we needed all the help we could get,” that I’m not just casually repeating a cliché. I mean that
we needed all the help we could get.
A few years ago, we heard about autism assistance dogs, and we did some research. It took a while to make the decision as getting a service dog is not like getting a well-trained pet or even a therapy dog. It is a lifestyle change, and an enormous commitment. But my daughter needed help. So we raised the money needed to train the dog, (we covered half and the grandparents covered the rest), and in March, our family went to Ohio for an intensive training course (they had to train us to handle the dog, who had already received over 500 hours of training).
My wife is allergic to dogs, so we requested a hypoallergenic breed. In March we got to meet her for the first time.
Her name is Shenandoah, and she is a Golden Retriever/Standard Poodle mix (aka “Goldendoodle”), and she is my daughter’s service dog.
She does many things for my daughter.
1)
Tethering – Ever heard the expression “I had to drag my child through the store?” or “He had to get dragged kicking and screaming into doing it?” Usually it’s a figure of speech, but for us it’s just another trip to the store. Now I just connect the dog to my daughter (who wears a harness), and walk Shenandoah through the store. The dog heels perfectly on my left side and my daughter just follows along. My daughter doesn’t mind being gently pulled along by her dog, whereas when I hold her hand she often screams and tries to run away any chance she gets. She’s getting pretty fast and is elusive. If I need to do something, I tell the dog to lie down and she becomes an anchor, keeping my daughter from running off. We take up a fair bit of space in the aisle and draw quite a bit of attention, but one of her raging tantrums on the floor did pretty much the same thing and was a lot more noisy and annoying.
2)
Tracking – My daughter sometimes escapes the house and runs away. Being in very good physical health other than her neurological problems, she is quite fast, and can outrun many adults. She has no sense of danger. We have had to call the police before and had the neighbors out looking. Shenandoah has been trained (and we keep practicing with her) to track my daughter anywhere – in the neighborhood, in the woods, and in malls and stores. I can’t stress how important her skills are in this respect. Shenandoah can find my daughter when no one else can. She’s got a tremendous nose on her.
3)
Behavior disruption – I’ve mentioned the screaming fits – “meltdowns, “ but I don’t think I can adequately capture what a 30 minute violent episode is like unless you’ve witnessed one up close. Let’s just say it’s pretty bad. Now when my daughter starts screaming, I just give Shenandoah the command and she starts licking her face or gently nipping at her. In just a few seconds my daughter will start laughing. She’ll still be mad about whatever it was that set her off, but she will be usually be able to keep her behavior under some control. I’ve tried everything to stop meltdowns on my own, and had some success with some tricks, but Shenandoah is a huge help in this regard and successful far more often than I am.
4)
Companionship – My daughter loves very deeply, but she is pretty hard on those she loves. Her behavior is disturbing to other kids and most adults and they usually seek to avoid her. Shenandoah is her constant companion. Kids now want to meet her dog, and we are teaching her to say hello to them and be friendly. Unlike almost every other kind of service dog, it is actually OK for other kids to pet Shenandoah in order to get kids to engage my daughter. The dog is still focused when she’s working and we’re out in public, and she’s not distracted by the attention. Shenandoah is also my daughter’s best friend. Even though my daughter throws the Shenandoah’s toys over the fence, takes treats out of the dog’s mouth, pulls her ears and has even bitten her, Shenandoah has never bitten her or anything. She just gets up and walks away when she’s had enough. We have to constantly make sure that my daughter is not hurting the dog, but we never worry about the dog hurting my daughter.
5)
Seizure alerting – This is still a bit of a work in progress, as we actually had a relatively calm period where my daughter was not having seizures in the months prior to getting the dog, so it was not already trained in this respect when we were paired with her in March. Several of her siblings trained at her school are seizure alert dogs however, and I’ve made considerable progress in training her now that my daughter has had a few recent seizure episodes. Shenandoah is doing very well in practice, but hasn’t alerted yet. However, when we got back from the hospital on Monday she went into my daughter’s room and alerted. Shenandoah is extremely smart, and I have no doubt she’s capable of alerting if I can be a good enough trainer/handler. OTOH, I hope my daughter goes at least a few months before seizing again. We have to monitor her constantly, especially while she’s sleeping. Either my wife or I have always had to sleep in the room with our daughter for the past eight years in order to be alert for seizures. That’s where Shenandoah could be enormously useful. I’ve installed a night vision camera and microphone system in her room and a flatscreen in our bedroom, but the earlier we can detect seizures, the more quickly we can break the cycle with medication and sometimes we are able to avoid a trip to the hospital.
Last weekend wasn’t much fun. Shenandoah was a huge help, and kept my daughter quiet while the nurses prodded her with numerous IV and blood draw procedures. More than one of the staff was surprised when what they had thought was a huge stuffed animal in the bed with my daughter turned its head and looked at them. She’s extremely mellow when she’s working. I kept her in the room the whole time except for potty breaks. Shenandoah was a total pro. But she was also pretty darn happy to be peeing back on her home turf and running around our fenced back yard after we got home.
(the splint is not a hurt arm, but to keep her from pulling out her IV).
Quick random OT question: Speaking of peeing, should I be worried about the burn spots on my lawn as far as her health? Is there anything I can do that won’t hurt the dog but will save my grass? I’d like her to be able to pee wherever she wants. She’s earned it, IMO.
People see my daughter and as she appears to be in good physical health, and wonder why she gets to bring her dog almost everywhere. Certainly some people have abused the right of disabled people to have an appropriate service animal to try to take their companion or therapy animal everywhere with them. My daughter isn’t blind. An argument could be made that she doesn’t NEED to have her service dog with her. However, the dog does allow her to function at a much higher level. She is more able to go out in public (we can actually go to a restaurant without a meltdown!), and we are able to leave the house with her and be in public without constantly worrying about her taking off.
My daughter has a legal right to have the dog with her under the Federal ADA. We don’t abuse that right. We do drive-thru wherever possible. I try to be efficient and respectful of others while in stores, invisible in restaurants, and we don’t go out all that often. Shenandoah is pretty big (60 lbs.) and can be a little intimidating by her sheer size and fluffiness. Some people say she looks like a muppet.
Shenandoah’s not perfect. One night a few days after we first got her home, she chewed up my favorite Georgia hat, shown here:
(Too bad I don’t have a stuffed UF alligator doll for her to chew on around here)
But even so she is pretty amazing. I grew up in Georgia, and they have an expression that is associated with a particular bulldog mascot: “Damn Good Dawg.”
Shenandoah is every bit of that, and a great deal more.
On a lighter note, I ordered my first custom bass today . . . but that’s a story for a different thread.
