Autism Service Dogs

During our recent flight, one of the other passengers had an ankle-biter stowed away in a soft-sided carrier. I would never have noticed, except that Glindy's sixth sense for other dogs manifested in the gate's waiting area.

Glindy started making her excitement whine, and it took me a few minutes of following her darting eyes and twitching nose to spot what looked like a Pomeranian that was sitting in its carrier several rows and a dozen yards away from us. Impressively perceptive, but annoying.

So, I figured it was a good time to practice. At first, I tried to distract her with some chin-scratching and ear-rubbing, but she kept whining. I didn't want to reinforcing the whining, so I stopped petting her and tried Plan B.

I'm embarrassed to admit that Plan B was positive punishment: every time she whined, I'd poke her gently but firmly with my toe and say "no." My idea was to make whining unpleasant, and to distract her, with the idea that I'd praise her when she was quiet. Alas, this actually increased her level of arousal, and the whining went from excited-curious to a much louder almost-howl. I've created this reaction in the same way before, so I really had no excuse for doing it again.

So, I dipped into my backpack and got out some Grizzly NuTreats and began working on focus exercises. In about five minutes, the near-howl had become an intermittent (and much quieter) whine.

While I wouldn't call this brief training exercise a success, it was a good learning experience for both of us. It reminded me of several things:

1. Positive reinforcement is still usually the best training tool.
2. Even though Glindy isn't food focused, and will not always work for treats, treat training is still more effective than other methods when it works.
3. It's not always convenient to use real-life situations as training exercises, but it's important—and often unavoidable.

On a much more positive note, once we were on the plane, Glindy was an angel. Our last flight segment was a Boeing 737 that was completely full; every seat was filled, and Glindy had to share the bulkhead with three clumsy humans (including me) with big clod-hopping feet.

With a little nudging, she curled up in the narrow gap between the economy bulkhead and the first-class seats in front of us. Even though I stuck my foot out to protect her, the real success was that Glindy managed to keep her tail safely tucked for most of the flight, with only a few reminders from me whenever the beverage cart trundled past.

A number of passengers and flight attendants commented on how well-behaved she was. That made me feel good, and reminded me that while Glindy and I will always have behaviors to work on, she and I really do make a good team.

Glindy and I took what is, hopefully, our last trip on Delta on Friday. Despite repeated calls to Delta's customer service line, Delta (as a company) steadfastly refuses to streamline or improve their horrific accommodative seating practices.

Apparently, forcing disabled frequent-fliers to wait on hold upwards of 45 minutes per call, and involving at least two levels of support, is "business as usual" at Delta. Imagine having to go through this every single week!

To add insult to injury, requesting accommodative seating on Delta ensures that you will have to wait in long lines at the airport ticket counter; their system for accommodative seating makes you ineligible for kiosk check-in. Even if you jump through all of those hoops, Delta's system still doesn't transfer the necessary information down to the regional jets they operate. This ensures that you'll have to make special requests, in person, at every gate on every segment of your journey.

Delta customer service sees nothing wrong with the system. In fact, they are so sure the system is perfect that you can't escalate problems beyond the second level of their call centers under any circumstances. The folks over at IS Survivor call this "customer elimination management." Delta has certainly managed to eliminate me as a customer.

While I recently posted about my speech in Sacramento, it's always good to get alternative perspectives from other people. Arielle and her husband were my hosts during the visit to U.C. Davis, and so I thought her comments on the presentation were noteworthy. I appreciated her kind words, and was also glad to hear that some things I'd mentioned over dinner made a positive impact on her personally.

On a side note, her blog entry also contains a photo of Glindy and I with the Buddy System hands-free reflective leash. Since the picture was taken with a flash, you can get a pretty good idea of how useful this leash could be in low-light situations.

This other photo shows Glindy wearing her chest strap cover from The Raspberry Field. As you can see, the cover makes her "service dog" markings visible from the front, which makes it easier for people to identify her as a service animal when she's sitting or lying down. I've found this to be important when store clerks are peering over their counters, or when waitresses peek under the table at restaurants. YMMV.

Tuesday night was the big night. Glindy and I took center stage at the U.C. Davis M.I.N.D. Institute to present two hours on autism service dogs. The evening went well, and I think the speech was well-received.

Our hosts from Sacramento Asperger Syndrome Information and Support were, I think, pretty impressed with Glindy. It often surprises people how well she behaves in restaurants and other public places, and how well she travels in cars and other conveyances. Overall, she made a good impression.

There were a couple of low points, though. Despite my efforts to desensitize her ahead of our speech by giving her a chance to sniff the strange dog, Glindy couldn't be dissuaded from barking and whining at a puppy-raiser's SDIT who was in attendance. She settled down with a bit of distance, as I knew she would, but it was still a bit embarrassing to have one's service dog making such a fuss in a public forum. As this has been an ongoing issue for us, I wasn't really surprised, but I was still a bit disappointed that the desensitization training I'd given her over the past year hadn't really made more of an impact.

Also, Glindy was a little less sedate and a little more attention-seeking than I might have liked during our two-hour presentation. Part of this was no doubt because it was the first time the two of us, as a team, had ever been in front of such a large audience. While I've done my share of public speaking before, this was something totally new for Glindy. Dogs consider direct eye contact as a challenge, and here we were in front of 50-plus people all looking directly at her. Considering that, I think she managed with considerable aplomb.

In addition—and this was probably my fault—I didn't put her into a down-stay or otherwise tell her what to do when we got started. That was largely because I wasn't sure what to do myself; I was still trying to decide whether to use the podium or wander the stage right up until showtime. In the end, I stood directly in front of the audience, which probably seemed a bit unnatural to Glindy.

She was pretty good throughout the entire two hours, but several times she miscued, thinking we were ready to walk off-stage before our time was up. My guess is that there were sounds from the audience that I didn't cue in on, but which she determined were "we're done here" signals. Or perhaps the shuffling of pages from my own speech acted as a false signal, since she's attuned to the sound of shuffling paper as the cue to end our therapy sessions. Aside from causing her a little confusion, though, this wasn't really a big deal.

Glindy also pawed at me increasingly as the talk went on, and several times during the last hour offered me her belly for scratching. Glindy isn't a submissive dog by nature—she's a status-seeking beta—so I'm pretty confident that this was intended as a calming signal for me rather than a submissive gesture to the audience.

The tactile support actually helped tremendously. Even though I felt confident and comfortable with being onstage, the stress of the constant sensory input from the lights, the echoing sounds in the room, and the constant interaction with the audience were definitely putting a strain on me. I think Glindy sensed that, and was doing her best to provide a relief valve for me. It worked, and the periodic belly-scratches enabled me to finish the entire two hours without needing to take a break.

I don't really know how other people perceived my interactions with Glindy, but overall I felt that we'd done a good job as a team, and that the speech itself presented a good model for how autism service dogs can help in a real-world setting. While we could have been a bit more polished, I think we did exceptionally well for our first speech together.

I hope that Glindy and I will be able to take our message to more such groups in the future. In the meantime, it looks like desensitization to other dogs is back on the training agenda.

Yesterday, Glindy and I were at the supermarket getting some lamb riblets for her dinner. As we were standing in the checkout line, the little girl sitting in the shopping cart in front of us started pointing at Glindy and squealing in excitement.

Glindy finds little children fascinating: they make high-pitched noises, they smell funny, and they move erratically. And so, when this little girl started squealing and making direct eye contact with Glindy, she had Glindy's full attention.

With this little girl's encouragement, Glindy started whining in excitement, too. A squealing girl and a whining dog: quite the matched pair, I thought. I knew what was coming next, though, and was therefore unsurprised when Glindy broke her stay, fully intent on inhaling a noseful of child-scented air from as close as possible.

I calmly put Glindy back in a sit. I pretended to turn my attention elsewhere, and waited for her to try again. My expectations were met rather quickly, as she broke her stay the moment I was no longer looking directly at her.

No biggie. I just put her back in her stay again, intending to do this as many times as necessary. After a few repetitions of this, she got the message and settled in at my feet.

As the girl's father finished paying, he turned to me and said he was sorry. I told him not to worry, and that I was grateful for the training opportunity they had provided us. I waved to them as they left and praised Glindy for sitting quietly at my feet, however belatedly.