DogWish Autism Service Dogs
DogWish Service Dogs and Neurological Support Assistance K9s

Service Dogs for Children, Families, and Adults with Autism

Dog Wish has placed service dogs with families throughout America, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Our dogs improve the quality of life for numerous children affected by autism and their families.  Through a service dog, children with autism have been taught to speak; respond and interact in their home and socially; use the toilet; understand and respond to communication, discipline, and love; overcome fear, emotional instability, and problems with eloping. Dog Wish has helped every single child we have ever worked with in dynamic and very positive ways.  The bond between the child and their service dog is an empowering experience for the child that transforms the life of the child and their family.

What we expect from our service dogs is simply extraordinary.  Producing a Service Dog is an incredible feat of artistic, educational, and genetically engineered excellence.

I would like to thank the many people and families that have teamed up with Dog Wish during the past several years, for the many things we have learned together.  It is one thing to train a dog to perform in obedience, tracking, search and rescue, melt down and seizure detection and alert work.  It is a completely different thing to work with a person who is neurologically disabled with Autism, and the parents of that individual, meet their needs, on their level, where they live every 15 minutes around the clock, and be successful.  It takes more than abundant gifts, education, intelligence, and good intentions to do this job. 

First of all, it doesn’t matter how well you trained the dog, or how well it performs, if it doesn’t bond and work with the recipient in a dynamic way.  There are definite, demanding, serious needs here, and lives on the line.  You are dealing with the heart and soul of the lives of those who have put their trust, their hopes, and everything they have in your hands, and are hoping beyond reason that you will have the answers they need.  Unless you know how to work individually addressing each recipient where they are, and teaching their family and care takers how to use your dog to help and resolve their issues, your work is fruitless.  There is a big distinction between a therapy and a Service dog, and a dog that doesn’t know how to supply at least three functions necessary for their handler to operate because of their work, isn’t a Service dog at all.  I’ll pick three; eloping, meltdowns and seizures, and social responsiveness.  If you can function better in these areas because of your Service dog, it is well worth your time, money, and energy.

Autism can consume you like fire on the altar of life.  Autism can become the fear that drives you, the emptiness that robs you, the darkness that taunts you.  It’s easy to say that children with Autism are just different, but the people I deal with are spending their whole lives in a courageous effort to counter its’ affects on their loved ones.  They have given everything they have trying to help in any way.  Sometimes reality is hard to face when you need so much. 
The reality I bring is that the dog isn’t a miracle worker.  The dog isn’t perfect, or perfectly trained.  What my clients come to realize and learn is that through the training I teach, the principles we enforce, and the methods I use for training, great things can happen.  Dog Wish Service dogs are NOT miracle workers, but through proper training, and consistent application, sometimes miracles do happen.  Often, it isn’t the end result that counts, but the journey along the way where healing, bonding, love, and connectedness occur, that is important. 

I am a lot like a computer technician.  I put everything into the dog that they will need to do the job on the level you want.  Then, we take the dog, together, and help them become the dog you need for the person you love.  Creating a strong bonding relationship is the most important part of the training process, and, sometimes, the hardest part of the process.  Sometimes it happens instantly, or right away, and sometimes it takes time and work to make the two a team.  A lot of that will be determined by the mental/emotional state of the affected person.  However, I do understand the process, and can create it almost all the time.

Using a tether, which is attached to the dog and the child, we make them a single team.  The parent learns to handle the dog, to transfer the training put into the dog from Dog Wish, and to use it to help the affected person.  We then take the team out and put the dog through “training”, along with the attached person, and the person learns by being with and watching the dog perform.
For the past several years we have worked with several families, teaching them to safely tether their child, or children, to our trained service dog.  Though this is a sensitive issue, with proper training it has saved several lives.  Once the child accepts this conditioning, the family can use it to control their physical behaviors in public.  For many families this allows them the freedom and peace of mind to have a more normal family life and be able to go out in public without fearing their child eloping. 

As a result of this work, in a short period of time we have noticed the following changes “across the board”, with almost all our recipients:

1.    The child will first bond and develop a relationship with their service dog.  Then through that relationship the child will become more active and involved in inter-family, and then peer relationships.  The Autism Society of America California Chapter survey of 2009 states that 57% of children with autism grow up without having a single friend.  These children are shunned, ignored, ridiculed, and are awkward reaching out socially.  A service dog can help a child form social connections.

There is a specific pattern I watch for to see the child – K9 bond is forming.  First the child accepts the K9, develops an interest and friendship with the dog.  Then they claim ownership of the dog.  This is when we start seeing social interaction happen. The fact that the affected child is willing to care for the dog responsibly, work with and handle the dog correctly, show ownership over the dog, learn through the dog discipline, responsiveness, behavioral control, etc., are exemplary.  Now, as the child handles the dog they are drawn into positive social interactions with people, including their peers.   It changes their lives.

2.    One of the first affects the dog has upon the handler is to balance their emotional behaviors, such as meltdowns.   After the child and dog bond, the dogs will connect with their child handler, and will alert if they are experiencing emotional or physical problems.  We’ve experienced our dogs letting the parents know the child is feeling sick when the child was unable to tell the parents. We’ve even had cases where the service dog knew their handler was going into a seizure and have gone through windows, doors, etc., to get to them to protect them.

Our dogs are trained to respond to minute changes in the child including specific smells being given off by the child.  The children’s melt downs in the presence of their service dog are much less sever; much shorter in duration and much more manageable.  For some families, they are now for the first time able to go shopping or dining without their child having a meltdown or eloping.

3.    The child usually uses the relationship with their service dog to either conquer or deal with their fears in a more confident and beneficial way.  They feel empowered by the dog to engage socially and to go beyond their “normal” expectations, to experience things that before the dog they would never have done.  Our service dogs are mentally conditioned to ignore and be neutral to other distractions, (people and animals) and focus completely and only on their handler.  In fact, every dog we place has learned to give their handler 90% of their focus at all times.  This is imperative for a service dog.

4.    Our service dogs can respond to non-verbal communication from their handlers.  Many children with autism, or other disabilities, are unable to communicate in a way which is easily understood. We’ve had child handlers who have never spoken until they received their service dog. The child hears their parents giving the dog commands and they vocalized the same command when they wanted their dog to respond.

5.    Besides becoming more focused, the K9 is trained help keep the child from leaving on their own and to find them on command.  This last two years we have had several dogs that alerted when their handler tried to “sneak out” by him or herself.  The dog would bark at them until they stopped.  This is also true of handlers trying to elope through doors or gates, or climb over a fence.  Their dog would “tell” on them.

A lot of this happens as the team grows together, through the training they experience.  The more you work with the “team”, the better the results you will achieve.  It is the combined experiences of working as a team that produce the interconnectedness that makes everything else happen.  Through the Dog Wish Service Dog you can reach inside your loved one’s mind, and help them to reach back to you.  This is an intense, emotional, and powerful took for re-programming both your mind and theirs.  The results, based on your performance, and the performance of your wonderful dog, can be amazing.

For more information please Contact Me through email and/or by phone.
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Best regards,
Bob Taylor, President
Dog Wish Inc. (501c)