Service Dogs!!

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Does anyone have any experience regarding service dogs for mental disorders?

What kind of tasks do autism service dogs carry out, besides stopping their partner from stimming?? Also what about dogs for PTSD and anxiety attacks, what exactly do they DO to help their partner, besides the obvious security that having a constant companion brings...

I am curious, as I think a dog could help me A LOT with my inappropriate behaviors, and I think I could handle social situation and public a whole lot better w a canine companion.

Has anyone ever been challenged in taking their service dog into a shop, bus, hotel, etc?? How do you handle it??

I think that service dogs are a good idea. It's too bad that Chico can't be my service dog. He'd be in my one room apartment with me, right now.

http://www.servicedogcentral.org/content/

hello, I have a service dog and she has made a big difference in my life. just having her with me has cut my meltdowns in half. she is trained to...
to interupt self injury
apply deep presure during a meltdown
pervent me from wandering int the streets
get me out during a fire alarm
get help when needed
help me find someone in the store if I get seperated
she keeps me safe when I wander
if I have a night mare she comes up onto the bed with me and comforts me then lays beside me till I fall asleep
she is also train to track me if i wander off or bolt

she gives me confidence and she helps me make friends. now she is learning to predict and redirect some meltdowns (not all)


word of warning be careful where you apply to i have done years of research into organizations and I have only found one organization I trust

Web Page Name

more task info

Autism Service Dog Tasks
Symptom/ challenge Task trained

Impulsive running: Dog retrieves individual

PICA: Interrupts behavior

Self harming behavior: Will interrupt behavior

Night Awakenings: Alert parents by barking or climb into bed with indavidual

Non-verbal: offer behavior when person tries to command

Social Isolation: Focus shifts to dog.

Fire alarms: Dog alerts the individual and gets them out

meltdowns: Dog climbs in lap to calm individual

Streets: Dog will stop individual from walking right out

Sneaking out: Alerts parents by barking

Nightmares: Dog will crawl into bed to calm individual

Wandering/getting lost: Track and find individual/ offer protection

Other tasks may also be trained as well especial if there are multiple conditions. i.e. Seizure alert.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2nZPZOaLK0[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YYG5-evoXg[/youtube]

i hoped this helped pleae message me if you have anymore questions always happy to help

Nimrodel is beautiful. Such a beautiful breed too.
I'm not sure if I need a service dog. I do have issues, especially sensory/ meltdown when in town or around a lot of people. I have focal seizures too.
I might be getting a dog soon and I know that I can register him to be an autism service dog.
It's just hard to know if I need one.

before you register him as an autism service dog he will need to be train spacific tasks to help you with your autism. also with seizure yo could definably benifit from a siezure alert dog
so if you dog will alert to the siezure which you will find out the first or secound time you have a seizure then he can immediately be classified as a servicee dog stll the training is important and for meltdowns I would train deep pressure and Nim during my severe meltdowns will actualy lick my face one major benifit I have with having nim is my anxiety actually reduces


oh and we have been challanged but we have cards with the ada law on them stating access is required. brochures about autism service dogs too and if we have to much trouble my boyfriend often handles it
in the begining when people tried to deny access would have a minor meltdown or walk out

Did you train your dog yourself or did you have a professional trainer or organisation help you out? If you did it yourself how much did you know about training beforehand? I'm so curious about people training their service animals themselves, and your dog seems to do quite a lot!

Another question: did you teach your dog intelligent disobedience? You said that he helps you get out during fire alarms and prevent you from wandering into streets, is he trained to disobey you during such incidences to get you to safety?

I have four dogs ranging in size from 6lbs to over 100lbs and while they're not trained service dogs, they most definitely are very therapeutic for me at home.

Thanks for your help.
I suppose I do have a lot of anxiety if I'm in a public area on my own. A dog would really take that edge off.
Now I just have to convince my mum about it. She's not to hot on the whole getting a dog in the first place idea.

Thanks for all the wonderful replies.

Just exactly how would one go about getting a dog registered as an autism service dog?? Like a self trained animal or one trained by a relative. I am unsure of what this entails...

(ps, nimrodel is a very adorable dog.)

Its important to remember that while dogs are great they only have the intelligence of the average 3 year old child, and they will ALL make mistakes. No dog is perfect, and while they can be trained to do many things, they do think very concretely and they cannot problem solve the way people can. There is more crap written about Autism service dogs than about any other type of service dog. A dog cannot decide to suddenly keep you safe, they cannot look both ways and decide when it is good to cross a road, etc. A guide dog for the blind is taught to refuse to cross if a car is moving near them and at most they have the road crossing skills of a 3 year old child. BEFORE any blind person gets a guide dog, they must have had extensive orientation and mobility skills, ie. cane training and be able to use their hearing to judge the flow of traffic. It is the blind person that decides when to cross the road. It is hoped that by teaching intelligent disobedience the dog will refuse to move if they give the command when a car is coming that they cannot hear, but it really is a hit and miss afair. It is the hardest thing to teach and the quickest thing to breakdown when out working. If it is not used at least every second day then the dog will not remember it. This is where the bull comes from when we have kids tied to dogs. Apparently the dog will decide to do one of three things, it will either run with the child and keep them safe if they are in danger, - a dog cannot decide what is and what is not dangerous to a person unless they are taught it, which these dogs are not, at most they have one or two lessons of intelligent disobedience, which the parents have no idea of knowing how to keep up the skills. The dog will run to the parents, which is normal dog behaviour, something strange happens and you go and seek out a human adult to reassure you, or they do nothing and are then supposedly saving up their energy so they can then go and track the child, at the parents commands, when the parents know the child is missing. Put simply these dogs are not knowing what to do, but whatever they do it is explained away as the right thing to have done in the situation.

I have perfect vision, but I utilise a fully trained guide dog from one of the top guide dog schools for my autism. The issues that I face and the assistance that I need are those primarily found in guide dogs. She guides me, so I do not have to know what is around me, she finds entries and exists, seats, bus stops, finds the counter in a store so I can ask for assistance if needed. I have huge issues around roads and wandering onto them, etc. While it is all well and fine to have her trained in intelligent disobedience, that is really not enough. That would be like giving me a 3 year old to take out with me and the 3 year old can keep me safe at roads. But what we do know is that I do not generally speak when in those really bad states and so we taught the dog to block me - she sits on my feet at every single road crossing, and will not get off without the correct command. This was much safer for me than relying on intelligent disobedience. Sure it means when I am well and running late for the bus I can miss it, as she has to stop and has to sit on my feet, no matter how empty the road is or the like. She is a dog and does not understand and cannot understand that it is OK to do this sometimes and not othertimes. When I am in a really bad zoned out place, we also realised that I clench my fists and she was taught this as a cue to lead me out of the place that I am in, to lead me to a seat to sit down when outside and to lean into me. I cannot at such times give a command to her, but we also know that what I need is to get out of the situation that I am in. Given that she is a guide dog, she knows how to lead me around people, to avoid overhaning obstacles, ditches in the ground, etc.

A service dog is not for everyone. There are hard things to do with having them. It would be really nice to be able to run down the street and buy a bottle of milk without having to think about is the dog brushed and clean, where is the harness, to have to stop at every single street corner, to always have to cross in the right places, etc, etc. But the fact is before I had her I could rarely if ever go out. Having to factor in her toileting breaks, she toilets on command, but relies on me to ensure that she is comfortable, to feed her, to groom her, to bathe her, etc, etc. To have to carry water, a bowl, a rain coat, towel, dog boots for if the ground is too hot or too cold, etc, etc, is a total pain. For some people the negatives outweigh the positives and they decide not to get one, for others, like myself the positive's outweigh the negatives and so it is worth having one.

There is no limit to what dogs can do to help, but you have to be able to prove it in a court of law and emotional support does not count under the law as a task. The law in the US has also changed to now only include dogs. So it is no longer service animal, but simply service dog. The best way to decide if a dog would be of benefit and what they can do to assist you is to work out what a robot could do to assist you, the perfect robot, that way you take emotional support out of the equation and you are left with tasks that are genuine and will count in court, etc.

The biggest mistake people make is thinking of tasks. Task training is the easiest part of training any service dog, the hard part is the public access training. Guide dog programs do not have failure rates of about 50% because they cannot do the guide dog work, training that is the easy part, they fail because they do not have the required temperament necessary for being in a public place, and it is simply cruel and inhuame to force any dog to be in public when they are not happy and confident to be there. While it is certainly possible to train your own service dog, the chances of doing so to the required standard are incredibly slim. Guide dog schools have international breeding programs, and every working guide dog is a failure as the best dogs become the breeders, they only breed from the best of the best, they have the best health care and the best socialisation and training and yet only 50% make the grade. What are the chances of the average person picking a dog from the general population and training it to the required standard, and common sense says it is very slim. Not impossible, but not likely also. And what is the person going to do if the dog washes out. This the biggest issue that is facing the US, that people are training their own dogs and taking them out in training and keeping them in training for life, it is not fair on the dog and not helping the person either. The fact is Jo Blow down the road does not care what the dog is trained to do, or even if the person is disabled, what they care about are that the dog behaves as the community has come to expect of guide dogs. I can assure you that guide dog users now have higher rates of access disputes than ever before in history, because businesses have had people bring in dogs that are not house trained, that bark and growl, pull on the lead, etc, etc. Many of these dogs are task trained, but no one cares if they help, what they care about is whether the dog behaves itself.

Sure dogs make mistakes, but those mistakes are small if they are highly trained. A trained dog in a public place, does not and never will require the use of training aides, like head collars, gentle leaders, correction trains, antipull harnesses, prong collars, etc, etc. If the dog cannot walk on a standard buckle collar the fact is it does not have the training necessary to be in a public place. A trained dog does not pull on the leash, and is always under total control of the person concerned. A dog for a person with any form of psychological issues, including autism needs to have a better temperament than most guide dogs and those dogs are even rarer to find.

I am all for service dogs for people who can look after them. I am not and nor will I ever be for tying a child to a dog, which is what these autism dogs for children do, and nor am I for out of control dogs in public places. Good pet dog training is not the standard needed for a dog in a public place, and the vast majority of dogs out there would never come from any reasonable program. I am also not for people thinking that because they have a disability or any condition at all they can make up some excuse to call a said behaviour a task and then turn the dog into a service dog. A service dog is trained for public access and that is the most important part of training and the hardest and most time consuming part of training.

I don't doubt bjcirceleb's comments about the limits of a dog's abilities and the extensive training required by both dog and handler, but Nimrodel has obviously had a fantastic effect on your life.

I love the first video so much it's making me cry.

I have a question:

Is it OK that I don't want a service dog? None of the other 1600 kids in my school have service dogs, and I really don't like people knowing I'm not one of "normal" kids. I'm also not big on animals. I don't like the feel of animal paws on me. It gives me the willies.

Of course it's ok. Most people on the autistic spectrum don't have service dogs, and if you don't like animals you'd find it difficult to work with one and it wouldn't help you.

I would love to have a service dog, lol its much harder to act on suicidal urges when you have a dog or other animal there to watch you and interact with you. but hell if I can't get a service dog for my mental issues.....then I may get one anyways or some other pet if they don't allow largish animals in the apartment me, my sister and cousin will be getting in the next couple months.

I kind of have to disagree, I was once almost attacked by a pack of dogs that got out of someones yard......and a big black dog just kind of came out of the trees(not sure if he was part of that group or just a random dog walking around) but he stood in front of me and growled at the other dogs until I was able to get a safe distance away. I think it takes more then the intelligence level of a 3 year old child to do that. When it comes to things like crossing streets and such they certainly are not perfect, but then animals have not nessisarly adapted to the human environment.