Autistic Service Dogs - help please!

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Hello to everyone on this forum. I have been reading posts from all of you for a little while. This forum seems to be a very helpful and supportive place.

my name is Lori Shanks and I train Austic Support Service Dogs. I would like to ask all of you a question.....children and parents alike.

Currently, when the family comes to meet their service dog, it is a tramatic first couple of days. There are new routines, new beds, new dog, new person, new place.......and this causes some children to shut down, or have a "melt down"

I am hoping all of you will pitch in, as parents, and/or people who are diagnosed as having any form of autism, and offer suggestions on how to make this process easier for the children involved.

If the family is in my immediate area, I have often offered the option of training in their home and this has worked much better. However, this is not always an option.

Any help or advice you can offer will be greatly appreciated,

Thanks in advance,

Lori

If the child and their family has a behavioral consultant - the consultant can help by making social stories and schedules using PEC symbols to help the child know what to expect when being introduced to the dog.

I actually ended up purchasing a program called "Boardmaker" so that I could make my own PECS and schedules, flow sheets for my son.

I checked your profile and didn't see a location. In my province, British Columbia, there is an organization that trains and places Autism Dogs. There website is autismsupportdogs.org You could try contacting them to see if they have any suggestions (or even examples of communication tools or schedules) that you might find helpful.

I hope that his helps.

Do you have people from all over the country coming to you and because of their distance you cannot go to them? Is there anyway to outsource the training to trainers that are local to the family getting the dog? It would be best to do the in home training if there is any way.

If not, I think the best way is to make sure the family receives a plan from a doctor on how to handle the trip and stay to meet the dog.

I imagine this is a very difficult thing for everyone involved to handle.

I think it would have to be a local meeting for me to consider this but we have 2 Boxers that are seeing eye trained,and thus far training them with our Autistic has been simple. Our reg trainer was able to work them in to routine.It's not as rocket science as one thinks but takes time. 6 months for the latest dog.

Everything I can come across on autism service dogs so far is for children. Why aren't they any organations that train service dogs for autistic adults? I have a autism service lizard but am probably going to need a dog sometime in the future because she gets stressed very easily and refuses to eat the next day and sometimes I have to stay home because it's too cold for her outside. I can't leave my house without her because my panic attacks are so bad. If I ever do get a mammalian service animal, I'd perfer to go to the pound and save a life.