Service Dogs - How do they work?

Service dogs provide a physical and emotional anchor for children with autism. With their child tethered to a service dog, families feel they are newly freed to engage in activities as simple as shopping at the mall. On the streets, parents are relieved of the worry their child might run away. In many cases, the service dog accompanies the child to school, where its calming presence can minimize and often eliminate emotional outbursts, enabling the child to more fully participate. Transitioning among school day activities is eased and the service dog provides a focus through which the child can interact with other children. This helps increase the opportunity for the child to develop social and language skills.

Not every child with autism will benefit from a service dog. Agencies screen and evaluate each situation carefully. Their goal is to ensure a successful match for the child, the family and the dog.

Demand for specialized service dogs for autism is growing rapidly. These dogs go everywhere with their wards—just as a physically disabled person would not leave his or her wheelchair at home, autism service dogs assist children with all activities, including attending school. Under the ADA law, there are no exceptions to where a service dog is allowed; all public places must allow access. It is important however that the child’s school be cooperative. Most agencies will not place dogs with children whose school will not allow a service dog. It is also important to remember that while the dog will probably become a trusted member or your family, its purpose is as a service animal, not a pet. It is through that relationship that mutual respect and affection develop.

**from www.autismservicedogsofamerica.com

An autism service dog is a service dog trained to assist a person with autism, to help them gain independence, confidence, and the ability to perform activities of daily living similar to anyone else. For the most part, these dogs are trained to perform tasks similar to those of service dogs for other sensory processing disabilities.

Function

Autism service dogs are trained to help the human prioritize necessary information, and assist the human handle situations which are, to them, so overstimulating as to be confusing, much as a guide dog provides visual assistance to a blind human, guiding them through potential dangers invisible to the human.

As with hearing assistance dogs for the deaf, the dogs may also be trained to alert their handler to important noises or other things requiring human intervention, such as smoke or a smoke alarm, a crying baby, a telephone ringing, a knock at the door. For a person with autism, it isn't quickly obvious which of the many external stimuli is the urgent one requiring their immediate attention. A person with autism must sort through both major and minor stimuli--the sound of crickets, the smell of the fabric softener on their clothes, a car driving past outside--in order to determine which of these, if any, needs their attention. They may understand that a smoke alarm is urgent and requires them to exit the building, but their autism may cause them to take longer going about it.

How Service Dogs are Trained to Respond to Certain Behaviors:

*** from Wikipedia.org