When Lisa McMillian asked dog trainer Kelli Collins if she would be able to train a working dog to help McMillian with her autistic twin boys, Collins replied honestly: “I don’t know anything about autism.” It was that honesty that made McMillian believe that Collins was the right person to try to help her train a dog for the boys. They went to work with Caleb, a German Shepard puppy, training him to recognized the boys’ scent so he could find them when they bolted. They also trained the dog to comfort the autistic boys when they were feeling anxious or unsure.
Training a helper dog to deal with autism is a bigger challenge than training a dog to help a blind or deaf individual. ”You can create physical disabilities in a training environment, you can’t create autism. There’s so many varying degrees of autism. Each child is a little different. Even between your own children, they are very different. We can’t create that in a sterile training environment,” said Collins.
They fused traditional search and rescue training with behavioral training for dealing with unpredictable autistic behavior. They even made a tether for one of the boys. ”The first time we took Caleb out and he was tethered to [Eric], the sense of freedom that child had was amazing. He was happy,” Collins said. ”One time we were sitting outside at a cafe and he went to get up and run and Lisa’s first instinct was to jump up and I’m like, ‘Let the dog do his job.’ and the dog stayed. Eric couldn’t go. She’s like, ‘He would’ve been around the corner and down the street now.’”
The boys’ occupational therapist, Amy Johnson, thinks that Caleb is a huge help to the family in dealing with the challenges of autism. ”One of the best things is seeing how Caleb helps the boys in terms of safety,” Johnson said. ”I think for the boys, Caleb is a sense of security and comfort and it helps keep them grounded, but at the same time it gives Mom and Dad the relief knowing that they are tied to Caleb and can’t get away. I think families [dealing with autism] want to always try anything they can and try anything that might work when you don’t have a cure and you don’t have any answers.”
