Autism Service Dogs

On several of the lists that I'm on, debates often rage about how often one needs to keep their service dog with them. The conventional wisdom, of course, is as much as possible. However, some listmates tend to take this to extremes, and seem to look down on those who don't equate "as much as possible" to "always, no matter what."

To me, one of the oddest things about this attitude is that it really doesn't take into account the needs of the dog. Granting that a service dog has a job to do, and that the job involves spending large amounts of time with the dog's partner, some dogs nevertheless have needs of their own, above and beyond simply spending time with their partners.

Glindy is a great example of this. She's strenuously motivated to maximize her time with me. She suffers from separation anxiety when she's away from me, and I've often made use of the fact that she views time with me as a "life reward" to reinforce her during training.

However, she's also a very energetic, active dog who needs more exercise than I can give her. If it didn't mean being parted from me, Glindy would happily run for miles every day: sniffing, exploring, and pouncing on hapless people and dogs in over-friendly greeting.

To deny her an outlet for this passion for romping seems unrealistic at best, and would certainly be unkind. So, even though she is now in training to become a full-fledged service dog, I try to ensure that she gets frequent trips to the local canine hang-out so she can run and play with all the other high-energy dogs.

For the past year or so, I've been taking the dogs to Pet Play House in Reno. It's a terrific facility that offers some very non-traditional services even by doggy day care standards: it's an actual house, open seven days a week, that offers dogs free run of the house and yard. They also offer non-traditional boarding, so the dogs don't end up locked in a crate or kennel for days at a time, which is an abominable practice that can't be good for a dog's long-term mental health.

At any rate, while I originally began taking Glindy to day care to manage her separation anxiety back when I travelled without her, now that she's a service dog in training I still think it's important to continue taking her there as often as possible. After all, if I don't fulfill her as a dog, including her needs for exercise, play, and canine socialization, then I can never expect her to fulfill me as a loving companion or dedicated service dog.

Be fair to your canine partner. Make sure you fulfill your dog as best you can, and listen to what your dog is telling you is most fulfilling. After all, partnerships work both ways!

I went to the video store with Glindy again this evening. Poor little Spencer was barking piteously at being left alone again, though. I wish I could take him with us, too. *sigh*

Tonight, we used the new Reflective Buddy System Hands-Free Leash with attached Lunge Buster. It works a whole lot better than the Ruff Wear Roamer Leash, which provides too much slack for proper control. The five additional feet of stretch in the Roamer also tends to get us wrapped up in things, and I'm forever untangling both Glindy and myself. The Buddy System, on the other hand, keeps Glindy much closer (2-4 feet), and the Lunge Buster attachment only has about 5 inches of stretch. Overall, I felt it gave us a better experience, especially when moving through narrow aisles and around other people.

I just ordered a new set of Service Dog in Training capes from Nu-Capes. While I'm pretty happy with my service dog vest from SitStay, the patches never get sewn on perfectly straight by the local tailors, which drives me crazy. And, perhaps more importantly, when Glindy lays down while wearing her vest, her leg sometimes can draw up inside the vest, and her paw will get stuck. This is primarily a sizing issue, as Glindy doesn't quite meet any of the normal sizing expectations, so I'm hoping that a different style of cape will fit her better.

As I've mentioned previously, Glindy refused to enter her new Portable Pet Home on our recent trip together. Part of it may have been her anxiety level, but part of it was doubtless due to the unfamiliarity of the crate and the new-vinyl smell that accompanies most of the portable crates.

So, I ordered a different one in advance of our next outing. I ordered a NozToNoz Model X-36 Sof-Krate from SitStay.com, which is a wonderful steel-frame crate that isn't appreciably heavier than the Portable Pet Home (which comes with a plywood floorboard for stability that adds some weight).

Some of the reasons I think this crate will provide a better training experience:

- It has a zip-open top, which is better for luring her into the crate, and for providing tactile rewards for time spent in the crate.

- It has a steel frame, so the 14-pound cat pouncing on the top of the crate won't damage or collapse it the way it does the Portable Pet Home.

- Leaving open the top prevents the cat from pouncing on the the crate in the first place, which means I can safely leave it set up around the house for familiarization.

- The 36-inch length fits better in my car, so it will be easier to take along regularly. - It fits various crate mats better than the roomier but non-standard 38-inch Portable Pet Home. I bought the Slumber Pet 35x22x1" memory foam bed for Glindy's traveling comfort, and it fits *perfectly* inside the borders of the steel floor frame.

Mostly, I'm confident that with more positive reinforcement in the new crate before we travel, Glindy will be happier and more confident in retiring to her crate when we're on the road again. Time will tell.

I've been giving some thought recently to road and parking lot safety. I'm not really sure how ensure that Glindy is both confident in following me into traffic, and at the same time cautious enough to stay *out* of the street or away from cars in parking lots should she ever accidentally get loose. After all, collars and leashes are not indestructible, and mistakes (such as dropping a leash) do happen.

I've asked on a number of lists, but nobody has really provided a clear answer as to what constitutes best practices in road safety for a service dog team. So, I've come up with my own, which I hope will suffice to keep Glindy as safe as possible in the event of a "doggy wardrobe malfunction."

I've decided to teach "cross" as a separate command. My idea is that I will teach an automatic wait at the edge of sidewalks, and that "cross" will be a much more focused form of travel than "let's go" or "come."

In the past, I'd tell Glindy "wait" at the edge of the street, and then say "come" when I wanted her to cross with me. The problem was that she will occasionally stop to shake herself in the street, or dally to sniff something interesting. By teaching her to always "cross" the street, and firmly correcting anything other than a brisk, focused crossing, I hope that she'll learn that streets are places that one may safely traverse on command but not places to linger.

And of course, continuing to work with off-leash training will provide another option in the event of an emergency. Let's just hope I never have to find out how well it works in the middle of rush hour.

So, it's our second day back since the trip to California. Glindy is still glad enough to be home that her usual high-energy, rambunctious nature is being kept in check.

In the normal course of things, when we're home she's often running in and out all day long. She loves to sit on the back porch, watch the birds, and occasionally leap at the back fence to bark at the dog in the yard behind ours. Then she'll bark to come back in, and the routine will start all over again.

When she's had enough of sitting around the house, though, she'll usually run back and forth to the garage door, asking to be taken to day care so she can run and play with the other dogs. This is usually my cue that she's under-exercised, and that I need to get with the program if I want to fulfill her needs as well as my own.

Today, by comparison, she and Spencer (my other dog) are glad to sit outside quietly most of the time, and visit inside with me in a fairly relaxed way. Glindy's still settling back into her routine, though, so by tomorrow I expect she'll be reminding me that it's time to hop in the car for day care again.

When I took Glindy on my business trip last week, she was a little overwhelmed by all the newness. I noticed this mostly from her loss of crate training.

When we first rescued her from the SPCA, she used to follow me from room to room, and never let me out of her sight. Over time, she became a little more confident when I was out of sight, but never really lost her separation anxiety. If I ever left her home alone, she'd tear things up, eat through walls and insulation, rip curtains, and break house training. Overall, it was a rough time for all of us.

Create training resolved a lot of issues. She can now be left alone at home for up to five hours at a time. I won't leave dogs alone and locked up for longer than that, but I imagine she'd be fine a bit longer in an emergency. She likes her crate, and will often sleep in it even when I'm home, especially if she wants a little peace and quiet in a darkened spot out of the way of household foot traffic.

Since she's happily crate trained at home, for the trip, I bought a Portable Pet Home. It's a soft-sided crate that I can put in the car, open in the hotel, and (theoretically) put her in for an hour if I wanted to go swimming in the hotel pool.

Unfortunately, she didn't want to go into the crate. Even though I could get her to pop into it briefly for a treat, she grew quite upset every time I closed the front flap. She clearly thought I might abandon her there in that strange place, and preferred to follow me from room to room, which she hasn't done in years.

In fact, even though she isn't allowed to sleep on the bed with me at home, she seemed so in need of contact that I let her sleep in the bed with me at the hotel. I'm sure the maids appreciated that, but the important thing is that it really helped Glindy settle in.

My one concern was that she'd over-generalize, and decide that she is now always allowed to sleep on the bed. I watched carefully for this assumption when we got home. To my surprise, she immediately reverted to her normal behavior: she slept in her crate downstairs whenever I was in my computer room, and slept in her doggy bed upstairs when I went to sleep.

Whether one ascribes it to a dog following familiar patterns, or to thinking that she understood that the hotel was a different circumstance, she clearly saw a distinction. Once again, I find myself proud of my smart and loyal dog.

I have mentioned that Saturday's fire alarm really hurt my ears. Loudness in general is something that causes me a great deal of unpleasantness.

I don't enjoy noisy restaurants. I've noticed that sports bars, "family" restaurants, and other such places seem deliberately designed to maximize noise: they remove carpeting from the floors; have an open floor plan with no walls, tall booths, or other sound-absorbing fixtures; and add TVs, loud music, live bands, or other distractions to increase the general hubbub.

Sometimes, I just find the noise level distracting. I can't think straight, and it makes it very hard for me to have a conversation with people at my table. Even when I can make out what they're saying through the ambient noise, the sheer volume and quantity of the sounds is entirely too distracting for me to follow what they're saying.

Movie theaters and concerts are probably the worst for me, though. I find the sound volume to be physically painful, and have resorted to wearing earplugs whenever possible. Of course, sometimes I forget to bring a pair with me. Now that I have a service dog, maybe I'll slip a pair of earplugs into one of her vest pockets just in case.

Hmmmm. I wonder if the noise levels that bother me are physically dangerous for a dog, since they have more sensitive hearing than humans. I'll have to add that question to the research pile.

Glindy and I got back from our first successful business trip late last night. We spent two nights in a hotel in northern California, about 3.5 hours away from home.

The trip down wasn't too bad, although Glindy whined a lot. She tends to do that when aroused or anxious, and a lot of times she whines to say "Hey! Wait! Where are we going?!" Luckily, she tends to settle down when moving at highway speeds, so it wasn't much of an issue on this trip.

She was very well-behaved at the hotel, although she refused to stay in her portable crate. She's fond of her crate at home, but I guess the fear of being abandoned in a new place was just too much for her.

She handled herself well at an extremely busy--and very noisy--French restaurant, although we ended up going elsewhere to eat when I realized it was just too crowded for her to sit safely at my feet. She was very calm, even with people's unfortunate tendency to loom over her and occasionally try to pet her. I was very proud.

Another incident was the fire alarm that went off at two in the morning on Saturday morning. It was the sort of fire alarm that uses a shrill, never-ending screeching sound, and it cut right through *my* brain and definitely hurt my ears. Glindy, on the other hand, was quite calm, and appeared to be in no distress. Mostly, she just kept looking at me to figure out what we needed to do. I was proud enough to pop.

On the way home, though, the poor girl was emotionally exhausted from all the noise, and the constant anxiety of all the new sounds, smells, and unfamiliar places. She slept the entire way, except for a few times when she nosed me for belly rubs.

Overall, I'd give her an A+ on our first trip. We *do* have a few things to work on, though, that I didn't think about until this trip:

• Who should go first through doors and into elevators?
• What sort of street recognition and parking lot safety do I need to train for, to ensure she's safe should her leash or collar ever snap?
• What ways can I work with her to ensure she doesn't get stepped on in busy places?

None of these things interfered on this trip, but they're definitely considerations for future training.

This blog is primarily for my own benefit, but may be of value to others. It will document the trials, tribulations, and (hopefully) successes of my new partnership with my autism service dog, Glindy.