Autism Service Dogs

One of the challenges of having a service dog, and with dog training in general, is that you can never be absolutely certain how your dog will respond to something new until it happens. You can make educated guesses based on temperament and past experience, but you can't really be sure.

Recently, it occurred to me that I had no real idea how Glindy would behave at the dentist's office. While she has solid public access behavior, I wasn't sure that I could trust her to hold a stay while a burly dentist was shoving a whining drill the size of a jack-hammer into my molars. :)

It would have been a bad idea to make a filling or other high-stakes appointment our first test, so I decided to take Glindy for my next routine cleaning instead. I figured that the worst that could happen would be an access challenge, or even an interrupted cleaning if Glindy couldn't behave herself. Either of these negative outcomes would be a lot less troublesome than not being seen while suffering from a toothache, or having to leave with a cavity half-filled.

When we got to the dentist's office, Glindy knew we were doing something different and started giving off the high-pitched excitement whine she's prone to using in new situations. I find it annoying when she does that, but all the ladies at the dental office wanted to say hi to the dog, pet her, and reassure her that everything was all right. Clearly, her whining triggers something maternal in most women, and they find it irresistible. I, on the other hand, just worry that other people might find it disruptive—but clearly I'm in the minority, so I just grind my teeth quietly when it happens.

Anyway, despite the initial whining (which always passes quickly) nobody gave me a hard time. In fact, curiosity and excitement seemed to be the order of the day.

My hygienist did ask some nosey personal questions, though, when I mentioned that I was training the dog for myself and not for someone else. This isn't uncommon; many people assume I'm a professional dog trainer or working for a service dog program when they see her marked "in training." They usually make some comment about how hard it must be to give up the dog after training them, at which point I'll usually let them know that I'm training the dog for myself. Many folks (including the hygienist) often respond to that by saying that I "don't seem autistic," which is hard to interpret (is it an insult, or a compliment?) since I have no idea what they think autism looks like.

Anyway, I wasn't really offended by her questions or reactions. I'm pretty "out" about having Asperger's Syndrome, so I don't really mind those sorts of questions as long as it isn't in an access-denial context.

Next, we went into the exam area where I found that there was no place to tie Glindy up. I ended up putting her in a down-stay in the corner of the room and just dropped the leash beside her. She only broke her stay once during the entire cleaning, and a rinse-spit-stay! were all that was needed to finish out the appointment smoothly.

Even though I wasn't sure what to expect from Glindy, and had never even mentioned either the dog or my disability to the dentist before, I'd say the visit was a success. I still wouldn't want Glindy roaming around—and perhaps joggling someone's elbow— if I had a diamond drill in my mouth, but things definitely went better than I expected.

Overall, I rate Glindy at 9/10 for service-dogness, with a point off for whining. The dental office gets 8/10, with points off for petting without permission. I, of course, get 10/10 for having clean teeth and the foresight to set up the whole chain of events. *grin*

I enjoy doing legal research about service dogs—partly because it's a subject near and dear to my heart, and partly just because I find the gyrations of our legal system to be fascinating.

The other day, I found this great case on FindLaw that reassured me that common sense has not yet been completely bred out of the human race. The case was about a service dog named Jazz that yipped during the intermission (NB: not during the performance) of a concert.

In looking at the individual merits of this case, the court found that:

[A business] may not exclude a service animal who has made a noise on a previous occasion, even if such behavior is disruptive, if the noise was made and intended to serve as means of communication for the benefit of the disabled owner or if the behavior would otherwise be acceptable...if engaged by humans.

The court also provided this noteworthy insight:

Clearly, humans generally do not bark like dogs and dogs generally do not cough like humans. But that does not render the ordered modification [to the Center's policies] unreasonable. The order requires a general comparison of disruptiveness, and this does not seem an especially difficult task. For instance, the acceptability of a given outburst—human or animal—can be gauged by patrons' responses. In this case, no patron complained on the two occasions that Jazz made noise in the Center; it seems clear that Jazz's behavior was not disruptive.

In short, according to the 9th Circuit, you can still be ejected if your SD is needlessly disruptive or behaving inappropriately, but a dog behaving like a dog cannot be considered inherently disruptive. If a dog yelps because someone steps on its tail, or makes an alerting noise, the context must be taken into account.

Of course, this decision doesn't absolve SD handlers of the responsibility to maintain quiet and well-behaved dogs, but it does mean that well-trained dogs aren't expected to be robots, either.

As a final note, I'm sure many will worry that some pet owner or uncaring SD handler will ruin this landmark decision by abusing common courtesy and good sense, using this ruling as justification for letting Cujo run amok. However, I feel certain that legal opinions like this display a lot of compassion and common sense; I simply won't believe that such a nuanced understanding of individual cases can be so easily upset by a few folks from the fringe.

Sometimes, the system really does work.

Glindy and I had another desensitization session in the park yesterday with Monica and Jody. As usual, Glindy's eagerness to go forth and do her own thing resulted in a lot of frustration barking, penalty yards, and stopping every few feet until she settled enough to walk forward again. So, it took us an extra five minutes to walk into the park, but we did manage it; that's definitely progress for us.

Once Glindy realized we were there to work, she settled down quickly, but not before knocking my treat bag off my hip and dumping its contents all over the dirt in her exuberance. This ended up paying off for her in the long run, though, as I was then forced to replace the Grizzly NuTreats that had been in the pouch with Buffalo Bites, which she absolutely adores more than anything else.

One of the cooler things we did was work our dogs in very close proximity by putting them next to each other up on the picnic tables and asking them to perform tricks. Glindy stole the show with her beautiful rendition of "wave," which prompted Monica's dog Stanley to copy her every time she did it in hopes of getting more treats.

I learned something interesting while working on wave with Glindy, though. She has a beautiful wave when up on a table, or when I kneel down in front of her, but she has trouble waving from ground-level while someone is standing in front of her.

My guess is that paw-lifting is a calming signal, and having someone looming over her is too much pressure on her at this time. She tends to use both paws in a leaping-up motion instead—probably in an effort to reduce our height disparity. We'll work on getting the wave stronger, and then try to generalize it a bit more.

We also did something fun. After watching Jody and Monica (who've both done some agility work before) coax their dogs down the playground slide, I decided to see if Glindy would try it. I led Glindy up to the top of the slide, and asked Monica to call her from the bottom of it. I wasn't sure Glindy would try it, since she's never done it before, but Glindy slid down the plastic slide nose-first with only a moment's hesitation. Woohoo!

Glindy and I also worked on a few socialization tasks. I clicked her for appropriate glances at the other dogs, and found that I could reduce the likelihood of rude "proctology exams" by clicking Glindy for less invasive butt-sniffs. By rewarding the right moment, I not only reinforced conflict-free sniffing, but also encouraged her to shift her attention back to me before the greeting escalated into a canine colonoscopy that set off the other dog. This is definitely something I think we want to work on more, though, so that we can really ingrain this new behavior.

Overall, the only problem we had during training was Glindy's tendency to take treats less-than-gently while aroused. While normally very careful, she managed to bruise the base of my fingernails more than a few times during training yesterday. I'm rethinking whether I should use the "lure hand/treat hand" method I've read about while doing desensitization work with her; it would certainly make things a little less painful for me, at the cost of accepting that dog-slobber will coat the palm of my treat-delivery hand.

I haven't been out of the house much this week, and I could tell Glindy was getting a bit restless yesterday. I got moving a bit too late to drop her off at day care (they don't offer half-days there), so I decided to take her for a walk instead.

I had two goals for this walk. First, I wanted to work on her loose-leash walking in a high-distraction outdoor environment. Second, I wanted to reduce her arousal level when coming into contact with strange dogs.

While we often work with a pinch collar to avoid power-struggles in working situations, I decided to go with a flat-buckle collar during training to avoid aversive stimulus. Especially when encountering other dogs, I really wanted Glindy to learn more self-control, rather than receiving a correction—even a self-inflicted one.

So, I put on her new "Evolution Blue" flat-buckle collar from Silverfoot, and added only one small concession to increased control: a medium SnapBack placed between her collar and her blue Knot-a-Leash to reduce the impact of any lunging. So, now properly outfitted, off we went.

At first, Glindy would forge past me every few feet. But, since this was exactly what we were training against, I simply planted myself and waited for her to come back to my left side before proceeding forward again. She knows that drill well, even if she doesn't follow it regularly.

Sometimes, she continued straining at the end of the leash in order to sniff a particular bush or other object. When that happened, I'd take a few steps backwards to provide "penalty yards." Once she returned to my side, I'd walk her back to her object of interest, although she'd usually lost interest by that time.

The system worked pretty well. While I wasn't keeping score, by the end of our 45 minute walk, she was definitely forging significantly less than she was at the beginning—although whether this was a result of real training or just being tired is too hard to tell at this point.

From a training point of view, it didn't hurt that it was almost mid-day, and the hot desert sun was putting a damper on her high spirits by the end of the walk. Mild exhaustion can be a real help in training, when the goal is to reduce arousal.

Throughout the walk, we'd walk by houses with fenced-in dogs. As usual, Glindy would start whining and forging ahead whenever she sensed another dog nearby. But this was part of our training, and I had a plan.

Whenever she began whining, I'd stop. We'd stand there on the sidewalk until her whining either faded significantly, or paused altogether. Then we'd begin walking again. Glindy finds forward motion extremely rewarding, so no treats were needed; I just waited until her arousal level dropped noticeably before allowing her to proceed.

She definitely began to get the idea. By the end of our walk yesterday, she was most definitely a less reactive dog. Again, the heat and exercise played their part, but I think the message was definitely getting through.

We did share a watershed moment on that walk, though. Near the end of our perambulation through the neighborhood, we passed by a house where a largish dog (Great Dane, I think) was standing unfettered in its driveway. Normally, Glindy would react to a reachable dog by whining, barking, and trying to rush up to greet it, but not this time. I stopped about ten feet away—just shy of the distance where I thought her arousal level would kick into high gear—and stood there with a loose leash while praising Glindy softly.

A woman ran out of her garage, and grabbed her dog's collar. She apologized, presumably for letting her dog roam the yard or something, but I cheerily said, "No problem!" and strolled off with Glindy following calmly behind me.

And you know what? It really was no problem in that instance. Glindy was calm; she was quietly interested in the dog, but in full control of herself. I was very, very proud of her right then.

We finally got home around noon. Glindy polished off the contents of her water bowl and collapsed on the cool kitchen floor to recover from the heat of the desert sun. She seemed tired, but happy—and I was happy with her.

On Sunday, I played "You Don't Say" with a few other local dog trainers. It's a fun game that's supposed to teach the players some of the mechanical and cognitive skills involved in clicker training, as well as helping to improve one's technique with positive training methods. The idea is that you train the other players to perform tasks using random objects, a clicker, and reward-tokens; no talking, luring, or mirroring is allowed.

Overall, it was a fun afternoon. However, my main criticism of the game is that it is too free-form for novices. In my opinion, the game desperately needs a set of "training cards," each of which contains a goal behavior, step-by-step training tasks that lead to the goal, and the clickable criteria for each step along the way.

Since most of the people I was playing with were experienced trainers, we were able to make it up as we went along, and managed to learn some things while having fun. Mostly, without goal cards, what we learned is that timing is critical, and that identifying clickable criteria for intermediate steps--or even identifying the intermediate steps for complex behaviors--can be fiendishly difficult.

I'd recommend the game as a great thought experiment for experienced trainers and behaviorists, but think it needs work before it's a useful game for novice or intermediate clicker-converts.

Yesterday was another good training day. Monica and I have been discussing ways to redress our dogs' reactivity, and decided to meet up in the afternoon to work on the problem, along with another lady who was having similar issues.

Normally, Glindy is so reactive around new dogs while on leash that I can't get her attention well enough to request a watch or a down. So, my personal goal was to work Glindy at the threshold of her reactivity so that we could reinforce these behaviors even under moderate arousal. My idea is that, even if we can't necessarily reduce the arousal level, at least we can improve her reactions so that she's more reliable.

Part of the challenge in shaping this behavior has been that Glindy is totally unmotivated by food when she's highly aroused. It really doesn't seem to matter what sorts of treats are involved; if she's really worked up, she'll still recognize the click itself as a behavior marker (she will even sometimes glance towards the clicker to acknowledge the event), but won't bother with the food reward. Here's how we managed to work around that, at least partially.

The three of us (and our dogs) wandered over to a small park, where we started out about 50 feet from one another. After a few minutes of yanking me around and marking everything in sight, Glindy settled into her normal whining routine.

So, as we stood around letting the arousal build, I took out my clicker. At first, I just waited for any break in Glindy's whining, and clicked for the momentary silence. After a few repetitions of this, Glindy would occasionally take a short break from whining to glance at me, and I clicked for the auto-watch behavior.

This actually worked really well. Normally, asking for a watch when Glindy is worked up is counter-productive. However, just out-waiting her seemed to work a lot better.

After a short while of encouraging the auto-watch, and seeing her arousal level drop a little bit, I began clicking for either the auto-watch or for glancing at the other dogs without whining. My idea here was two-fold: training an incompatible behavior like watch is a good way to take the focus off the other dog and reduce her arousal level, but it's essentially unnatural; trying to re-associate the sight of another dog with positive experiences, instead of trying to tear her attention away from something she wants to keep an eye on, seems a little bit more in-tune with her natural drives.

Anyway, I figured having two strategies is better than one. While I know that one should really only train for one behavior at a time while clicker-training, I decided that what I was really after was calm watchfulness, so it didn't matter to me whether Glindy was looking at me or the other dogs when she entered that state. Whether this is a technically-flawed rationalization or not, it certainly seemed to work.

After working her for a bit in this way, and occasionally moving closer whenever the dogs had settled a bit, we were eventually able to work the dogs within about a yard of each other. By the end of the session, we were even able to take turns passing between the other pair of dogs with just a few feet on either side, and making close circles around them.

Before resting on my laurels, though, I should point out that Glindy certainly got the idea that she was there to work, and settled in reasonably quickly. However, near the end of the session, the sight of a fourth dog playing ball on its front lawn a full block away from the park caught her attention and refused to let go.

While she continued to behave reasonably well around the other two dogs we were training with, every time she caught sight of this other dog she'd start whining, staring, and completely ignoring treats even when they were waved right under her nose.

Still, it's progress. I really like the idea of using free-shaping to make the sight of other dogs a positive experience, rather than a stressful or frustrating one. So, I think we'll continue working on this, and see how much progress we can make.