The Golden Bridge

A Guide to Assistance Dogs for Children Challenged by Autism or Other Developmental Disabilities

Patty Dobbs Gross

• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781612495675
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Autism Spectrum Disorders
• Index: Psychology

In The Golden Bridge, Patty Dobbs Gross explains how specially bred and trained dogs facilitate communication for children with autism and other developmental disabilities. This important work is a guide for parents, teachers, and therapists alike, and is written for all those who are dealing with the social, emotional, and educational issues related to raising children with such cognitive challenges. The Golden Bridge explores unique and complex issues inherent in living with autism, training an assistance dog to work with a child with autism or a developmental disability, and using an assistance dog to deal with a child's grief. Myths and labels about autism are explored, examined, and carefully redefined. While focusing on children with autism in The Golden Bridge, Dobbs Gross shares key insights applicable to anyone breeding, raising, training, and working with dogs to mitigate any type of disability at any age. This impressive volume also contains a list of resources for follow-up information, a section on books about autism, and a directory of assistance dog providers.

Part 1

The Journey Home

1

The Golden Bridge

We need light in the darkness and sound in the
silence. We need bridges in place of walls and we
need to be encouraged to cross those bridges one step
at a time from our own world to a shared world.

—Donna Williams, Australian author with autism

This book is written for anyone who desires to help a child socially, emotionally and educationally through the use of a properly bred and trained assistance dog. It is designed to help you to locate an appropriate dog for your child through a recognized organization or independently, to craft a training plan and to create this dog’s ultimate job description once inside your home.

It is written from experience, as over a decade ago we received an assistance dog named Madison from Canine Companions for Independence (CCI) to work with our son, Danny, who had been diagnosed with autism at the tender age of two. Today Danny is 18 years old and preparing to attend the University of Connecticut, where he will live in a dorm and major in communication sciences. He is respected as a talented writer and filmmaker in our town and he enjoys a small circle of close friends and a large measure of intelligence and integrity. I don’t think the aging golden who still sleeps by his side can take all the credit for his successful development, but I do believe Madison contributed greatly to Danny’s solid social skills and sky-high level of confidence.

These goals did not take center stage during the maelstrom of Danny’s early intervention, and they were not even the specific goals we had in mind when we brought Madison home. The ways Madison helped our son came as a result of a dynamic process that involved every member of our family. We learned as much from what worked with his placement as what didn’t, and all that we discovered has formed our philosophy for creating our placements at North Star Foundation.

Madison came to work with Danny in the spring of 1993; CCI’s official title for him was “social dog” and he was paired in a three-way partnership with Danny and my husband, Ron. I wanted to be the one to attend the mandatory two-week training period with Danny, but I had just delivered my fourth child the week our name came up on the waiting list, and so Ron accompanied him to CCI to pick up Madison without us. It was with great regret that I watched them go, as Danny’s siblings and I wanted very much to take this new journey with him. This experience taught me that with placements involving children, all family members should ideally be included in the process of acquiring an assistance dog as much as possible. A healthy family needs to share both the heartbreak as well as the joys that come with meeting a child’s challenge.

We were told that to promote bonding we would need to establish that Madison was Danny’s dog as opposed to his three siblings’, and so we ran into our first roadblock to our placement, painfully and headlong. Her name is Jennie and she is Danny’s older sister; she was only five at the time, but packed a real wallop in the pure will department, especially concerning animals. I believe CCI’s policy regarding siblings is necessary due to the difficulties of bonding with an older dog, especially when we consider the importance of the dependable canine service that an adult or a child with a physical challenge requires. In these cases, dogs need to keep as their primary focus the people they are serving. However, when we tried to enforce this “hands-off” policy with Jennie, it not only didn’t fly, it crashed in painful flame. For one day I tried to keep her from bonding with Madison before her plaintive sobs changed my mind.

I now believe that siblings of a child with a social, emotional or educational challenge need to be a part of any effective therapy that is to take place inside their collective home. Siblings help to bring the assistance dog into the fold of the most important social clique your child will ever attempt to enter: your family. The siblings of a child with a social challenge such as autism have more important roles to play in their families than average children, and their support and ability to teach and to lead their brother or sister, as well as the assistance dog who works with him or her, is key to a successful family group. This is why all the placements we make at North Star are family-based, with every member given a special job to perform with their North Star dog. The job assignments are created with bonding issues uppermost in mind (i.e., to facilitate bonding, jobs such as feeding will be given to the child with a challenge, but we also try to draw the rest of the siblings into the placement with jobs such as walking or grooming). The dogs we use for placements at North Star are from very people-oriented genetic lines within very social breeds, and they are encouraged to form individual bonds with every member of their immediate family, which sets us all up for success.

In traditional assistance dog programs, fully trained dogs are placed with human partners when the dogs are over two years of age. New owners must learn handling skills during a two- or three-week training session, and selection of the specific dog for the person he or she will serve is made toward the end of this session. Dovetailing the dog’s prior socialization experiences with its future job description is not given high priority, and follow-up services are usually minimal. While receiving a fully trained dog is certainly more convenient, there can be drawbacks to placements created between children and older dogs not specifically socialized to work with them, and danger in placements that are not monitored closely by professionals as the years pass. Placements made to help a child socially, emotionally or educationally differ significantly from one meant to help a physically challenged adult, and so the philosophy of placement should be tailored to better meet the unique needs of the child. Training plans should be developed in tandem with the dog’s natural development and abilities, and respect should be given to meeting the dog’s needs as well as the child’s throughout the life of the placement.

At North Star we place our dogs within the home at a younger age than typical for assistance dogs, as less intensive training is needed or desired. It is indeed possible for a dog to be too trained; I’ve seen dogs like this, with the uncomfortable mix of a sensitive nature and correction-based training, waiting tensely for the next command and frightened of failure. We want to take this energy and work with it to encourage creativity in a dog’s approaches to seeking attention from a child. We also take full advantage of the superior bonding that comes with following an earlier timetable for pairing and placement. This opportunity allows us to create early and specific socialization goals appropriate for the dog’s ultimate job description, and to begin work on them immediately. This also allows early visits to take place between the puppy and the child, with rich opportunities to educate and prepare them both for their future working relationship.

Creating placements when the dog is still young can help to facilitate the strongest bonds possible, along with ensuring that the dog’s early training and socialization will match the child’s needs for the dog in question. By the age of two years, a dog’s temperament and abilities are well established. What if the dog has not had exposure during the early months to the child in question, or the specific challenges that child presents? With no experience in how to interpret behaviors that many children with autism display, the dog may react unpredictably. Children with autism or other developmental disabilities often display unusual behavior, occasionally throwing loud tantrums or failing to grant the appropriate body space that we unconsciously and consistently grant each other. Dogs depend greatly on nonverbal communication, and are apt to be uncomfortable with violation of “personal space.”

A case in point: a few weeks after we received Madison, I decided to take him to a rehabilitation center for a pet therapy visit. Shortly after entering the center a woman with Alzheimer’s disease approached, waving her arms and speaking loudly in gibberish. Madison growled menacingly and we beat a hasty retreat. I was mortified and confused. Here was a dog that had a very gentle temperament and was extremely well-trained; it took me a while to realize that Madison’s lack of exposure to the profile of a typical Alzheimer’s patient is what caused him to interpret her behavior as threatening. It occurred to me then that a dog should ideally be raised from puppyhood with exposure to his/her eventual partner, or at least with exposure to the typical behavior patterns of this future partner.

Madison came to us equipped with the skills of a working mobility assistance dog, and although his temperament proved exactly what we needed to help our son, many of Madison’s skills were useless to us. (Turning the lights on and off is a cute trick, but it’s tough on wallpaper.) Although Madison formed a bond with my son Danny and the rest of us, right from the start his canine heart clearly belonged to my husband, Ron. My theory is that this happened because Madison’s puppy-raiser who cared for him during his first eighteen months of life was a middle-aged gentleman with no family. The powerful and early bond that formed between the two provided the template for Madison’s future relationships, and now when Ron leaves on his occasional business trips our entire family must support Madison emotionally. Ideally, this is the type of deep bond a service dog should form with his child partner, not the father of the child. I believe the earlier the working pair bond, the greater the chance for achieving a deep relationship. It is out of these convictions that North Star Foundation was formed and I set out to breed, socialize, and train service dogs for children in nontraditional ways.

The vast majority of our placements have local puppy-raising families that host visits from the child the pup will serve and they support the gradual transition to the child’s home. This connection between families also helps to pull the child with a challenge into the fold of his community, as most challenges children face have the potential to isolate them. The cooperation that exists between a child’s parents, therapists, siblings, friends and puppy raisers, together with the puppy as fluffy catalyst, provides a powerful support system for a child with a challenge.

However, it is a very different experience to acquire an assistance dog at a young age than the more traditional approach of placing assistance dogs over the age of two, when nearly all training is complete. It takes more time and energy to train and set boundaries for the young pup, and it takes patience to teach children the skills to lead a young dog traveling like the original poky puppy up steep learning curves. Neither method is ideal; both have drawbacks that should be recognized and worked through.

Careful breeding and educated puppy selection go a long way toward reducing training time and increasing the safety of our placements, as does establishing optimal behavioral patterns right from the start. But this partnering up to complete a young dog’s training isn’t for every family, and we advise families that are not able to expend this time and energy to seek other organizations that provide fully trained dogs to work with their children. These fully trained dogs are expensive, and so you may find either the money you are asked to provide or fundraise prohibitively high, or else you may discover the waiting list to be dismally long, but there are circumstances that make these older, fully trained dogs worth the wait as well as the money.

There are desired qualities in a North Star dog that cannot be trained; they instead are recognized, carefully nurtured, and supported. The ability of some dogs to read human social cues is capitalized upon in North Star’s breeding program. North Star dogs pay attention to the subtle cues every member of the family gives out, and I believe much of the potential for these qualities comes encoded in the genes. We have been selectively breeding dogs for North Star work that display confident intelligence, creative problem-solving ability and the potential to form strong bonds with the members of their family. The relationship these well-bred and well-socialized dogs will eventually form with their handlers and children is equally important in creating a successful placement, as being able to communicate effectively with a dog is a necessary component to any working canine partnership.

It requires a shift in thinking about traditional dog training to fully understand this concept, as traditional dog training has tended to focus on simple canine compliance rather than communication about our shared goals. I myself have been struggling to shift my paradigms about dog training; several years ago we spent a great deal of time and energy developing a technique to train dogs to block a fleeing child’s escape. A North Star mom named Kathy desired to teach her son’s dog, North Star’s Nomar, to block her autistic son Jake’s flight. Trainer Pam Murphy worked together with Kathy to achieve this goal, and ultimately they were successful; they even got Nomar to block Jake to the left or right upon her verbal cue! Training Nomar to block Jake was a major achievement, but the blocking skill must be regularly practiced and reinforced to prevent its extinction and, despite all the effort it took to design and maintain this training, to date it has never been found necessary to keep Jake within boundaries. There has been a valuable and ironic silver lining to all of Nomar’s training, as the emphasis on the blocking training within the family served to demonstrate the seriousness of the issue in Jake’s mind. Jake now stays within boundaries appropriately, seeking his parents’ permission before leaving the yard.

Jake and Nomar can enjoy each other’s company outdoors now that Jake has learned an appropriate respect for boundaries, with Nomar’s assistance. In the meantime, however, four other North Star children with autism have wandered off from home and each time their North Star dogs have followed them and kept them safe in a variety of ways the dogs themselves created. One North Star dog, Flash, began to spontaneously circle his child, Justin, when he wandered away, offering him his leash with his mouth. Another North Star dog, Bailey, coaxed his boy Gavin to return to his summer beach house by nipping gently at his heels all the way home. Despite solid foundation training to stay in their respective yards, all these dogs followed their children when they wandered off their property. The intelligent disobedience of the dogs choosing to leave the property to follow their children against their specific training to stay in the yard was important, but the real value came with the creativity these dogs then displayed in their efforts to bring their children home. None of the North Star dogs were specifically trained to circle their children who were leaving the safety of their homes or to nip at their heels or hand them their leashes, but they had all been raised with lots of follow-the-leader and hide-and-seek games played with their children to set the stage for their later care-taking behavior. These North Star dogs’ intelligent disobedience-in-action demonstrates the combined influence of their natural instincts along with their perceived role within their pack (i.e., their child’s family). I believe these dogs demonstrated this ability due to a combination of factors that involve both nature as well as nurture:

•Good genetic potential,

•Gentle and positive training, and

•Communicative relationships with their handlers that encourage the dogs to think for themselves.

By focusing on the importance of relationship-building rather than cut-and-dried training we can better support our canine companions in their effort to think for themselves rather than just obey our commands. Obviously, the dogs need to regard us as leaders, and our North Star dogs are submissive even to the youngest children they serve, but the respect they have for their families is mutual and not tainted with any fear of physical corrections.

This is very important to our work at North Star, for our children with autism are relatively safe when they are in our sight because we are there. But most of the danger to children with autism happens when we are not there, and all four times when North Star children with autism have wandered off, their dogs have followed them and thought for themselves to figure out how to bring them home. And it is very important to state clearly that although our deepest hope is that North Star dogs will come to understand what their roles are as protectors in vulnerable children’s lives, this dog should still be regarded as a safety net beneath other safety nets, and never as a babysitter paid with liver snaps.

The most rewarding aspect of my work is watching the child begin to take responsibility for his or her dog. Encouraging a child to take an active and nurturing role in raising and training a puppy is an ideal way to teach him/her empathy and responsibility. Most children with challenges have had significant care given to them in their young lives, and many seem quite delighted to experience the role reversal that a North Star placement offers them. I have seen nonverbal children run to fill up their dog’s water bowl when their dog began to pant, and the pride they take in watching their dog slake their thirst is obvious. Expanding this empathy to a thirsty playmate is tricky (for playmates don’t normally pant), but a wise parent will point out the more subtle signs of thirst in humans, including the phrase “I’m thirsty!” It is language that gets in the way of understanding our nonverbal children, and of them understanding us, but as luck would have it our dogs are not inclined to be verbose. Many nonverbal children are actually quite skilled at reading body language, and most are more perceptive than we might imagine. They are also more sensitive and empathetic than you may believe, and not once have I seen any child with autism be intentionally rough with his dog. The one time I heard of a child being rough with his North Star dog (which immediately ended the placement) was when a child had a major sleep disturbance and difficulty with his changing medications.

Unfortunately, sometimes empathy does not exist or develop properly in a child, and in this case an assistance dog placement would not be appropriate. Children who have poor impulse control may still be appropriate candidates for an older, more stable dog with the necessary guidance and supervision, but a young and vulnerable dog would obviously not be appropriate for them. I think it is very important to understand that children who tend to lash out physically are not good candidates for any dog, or any animal, at least until these tendencies are brought under strict control. This is for the safety of the dog as well as the child, for any animal will ultimately defend itself despite its breeding and training.

Although assistance dog placements have been helping children with social and emotional goals for over a decade, the concept of training a dog in a three-way partnership with a child with a developmental disability is still somewhat unusual. I personally witness the benefits of these placements on a daily basis, but I also greatly respect the potential dangers that exist when a child with a developmental disability is pai...