This is a long-overdue post about Claude, our beautiful, biddable, chilled but chipper, lifesaver of a Labrador. I've meant to write about him for a good two years - I've stood up in front of roomfuls of real-live grown up people twice now to talk about him for fundraisers for Dogs for the Disabled (more on that later) but somehow words have evaded me here up til now. I'm very aware that blathering on about one's pets can seem like a terrible affectation - nearly as bad as knitting jumpers with your beloved pet's face emblazoned on the front - so, although I have a lot to say on the subject, I'll try to keep the fluffy eulogising to a minimum (and won't even include pictures of me wearing my Claude knit!!! - joking - really...!)
Claude is now a fully grown dog of 2. He's gorgeous - breath like a halitoid tramp - but gorgeous. When I say that he is a lifesaver I'm exaggerating a tad (Drama Queen - MOI?!) but he's definitely not just a dog. He's a family therapist, chief comforter, arbitrator, speech therapist, marriage guidance counsellor, jester, personal trainer and all round good egg. The phrase "man's best friend" doesn't come from nowhere. He is man, woman and boys' best friend around here (actually cat's as well - he and our feisty feline, Sass, are inseparable). He is my constant companion and rock - happy to share my joys and put up with any teary down days. He's always delighted to see any one of us and - even half an hour's absence merits a full hopping, wagging, toothy-grinning greeting from Claude. He considers it his duty to see J onto the school bus in the mornings and to sit waiting by the gate for him - rain or shine - when he returns. He hops into bed with G for his morning cuddles while I get J up and ready. He is gentle and patient and has "turned" many a dog-phobic child into one who clamours for his very own Claude! Phew - am getting carried away here. Let's just say he's pretty great for one who needs his doings picked up in a plastic bag!
It all started when we were wading about in the seeming quagmire of J's new diagnosis. As an antidote to the reams of medical jargon, "cures" and therapies that I'd been trailing through, I read a book called "A Friend Like Henry" that my sister had sent me. It is the story of a family wrestling with their son's fairly severe autism whose lives were turned around by getting a dog. This lovely (and true) story prompted the next flurry of Googling and researching and we came across "Autism Assistance Dogs". These dogs are incredible - trained to keep the kids safe, break tantrums and to be friends to kids with autism - but, sadly, extremely few and far between in this country - only 2 organisations are currently training these remarkable creatures (Dogs for the Disabled being one) and the waiting lists are enormous. Along with the fact that Dave and I are hideously impatient people, we also decided that a dog to specifically help J would only serve to tip the precarious balance of our family even further at that point. What we really wanted was something to take the prime focus of our lives off J's autism and to help us to be us again - G needed a canine friend just as much as J and, acually, so did we!
More Googling led to the discovery that not all breeders are happy to hand over a puppy to a family containing a child with "autism - that's mental illness isn't it - sorry love, couldn't do that to a dog"!!!! Really - thanks Mr Frederick Ukker of Farnham! However, we'd learnt early on in J's life that our gut feelings tend to be worth sticking with, and having decided that only a Black Labrador would do, I persisted until we found the beautiful Poppy and her pups, residing in palatial splendour on the Putney banks of the River Thames. Poppy's owner couldn't have been more helpful and invited us to bring G and J over to hang out with the puppies. After all, J had never even so much as glanced at a dog so we had no idea whether he'd even like creatures of a canine persuasion. While G and I melted into fits of cooing over Claude and his plump, wagging siblings, J took no interest whatsoever and wandered off down the garden. Damn Damn Damn. Oh, but hang on, this complete lack of interest was by no means reciprocated by Poppy who had volunteered herself as J's guardian for the entire duration of our visit. She was never more than a whisker away from him for the hour that we were there. When J sat down, Poppy sat down. When J ran, Poppy ran. Now and again J would place a hand on her head, without looking at her. There was some kind of magic going on here and, being scientific types(!), that was good enough for me and Dave.
A few weeks, many visual schedules and "social stories" later, along with J's now obsessive viewing of the video clips we'd made of the puppies, we collected a 12 week old Claude. And that.... gulp...tear (still gets me).. was the first day that J ever spoke to anyone directly. "Hello Claude. You are a dog" - full (and I mean full) eye contact, along with blushes of delight as he bustled around finding toys for our new family member and occasionally rushed off to his letter bricks to spell out his new best friend's name.
It didn't take long for the blanket of love that Claude inspired to envelop us and pretty much everyone who met him. (Would it ruin the moment to add that it didn't take long for the fabric of the carpet to become more dog pee and little black hairs than man made fibres too..?!) Those first few months were by no means plain sailing - it was a lot of fun but tougher lessons were also learnt - cause/effect being one of them when J discovered that if you pull Claude's ears/tail then he squeaks pleasingly. Up to this point, J hadn't associated the pain that he felt when he was hurt in any way with pain that others felt. In autism there is a classic lack of empathy so if J yanked out a handful of my hair and I screamed or if the puppy had his tail pulled and squeaked, J didn't understand that the pain we felt was the same sensation as the pain he felt when he bashed his head/knee etc. I totally drew the line at Claude being hurt so made a very clear rule and a rather fine "social story" about why we don't hurt others and spent several weeks never more than a foot away from J when he was near Claude to prevent any repeat offences - it was knackering but it worked.
The other benefits and lessons are too many and varied to go into in too much detail (that dog deserves a book really) but in short:
- Claude's toilet training gave J's toilet training the impetus it had hitherto lacked - J finally realised that neither he nor the dog would be praised for peeing in a glorious arc across the living room! He also discovered that pee comes from within and is not just a disconnected wet feeling hitting your feet - this after much scrutiny of Claude's "demonstrations"!
- Both boys basked in the loyalty that Claude provided - their squeals of mirth and merriment would bring Claude running to join in the fun, just as their tears and traumas would bring a wagging Claude to rescue them from their woes.
- When out and about with a roly poly puppy, it is impossible to avoid PEOPLE. The world loves a puppy, and however much J would like those PEOPLE to keep their puppy stroking, cooing gooeyness to themselves, the lure of those brown eyes and a wagging tail is too strong for these PEOPLE. J had to get used to the fact that when we were out with Claude, PEOPLE would come and talk to us. It took quite some time for him to become accustomed to this "intrusion" but eventually he began to tolerate it.
- Children with autism can be tenacious and obsessive. Small puppies can be tenacious and obsessive. Give them a tug of war toy and they'll amuse each other for at least an hour. Reeeesult!
- Having a small defenceless puppy in the family finally stopped every conversation that me and Dave had being about autism and kids - we'd been floundering about, trying to come to terms with J's autism and it was somewhat engulfing us. But somehow, by adding in the rhythm of having to walk, feed and water the dog, we managed to break the loop we'd got stuck in.
Suffice to say that we were all pretty chuffed with Claude. He excelled at his training classes, was easy and fun to take out for walks and was happy to be mobbed at the school gates by his very own fan club of kids. At that point Dogs for the Disabled contacted us, inviting us onto the pilot scheme for a course they were setting up, not for Autism Assistance Dogs, but for their PAWS workshops (Parents Autism Workshops and Support) - a general guide to getting the right dog (ok so we'd done this bit and realised we'd been pretty lucky with Claude - not all dogs would be fit for the task); and then, more interestingly to me, a large chunk of the workshops was working with D for D's dogs and being shown how to maximise the relationship between a child with autism and a pet dog!
(look - there's me and Claude on their website!!) http://www.dogsforthedisabled.org/partnerships/Autism_services_for_children
I loved these workshops - the Dogs for the Disabled people really know their stuff and clearly all adore their work. They have a huge enthusiasm for what they do and their methods of training the dogs are fascinating. Using a clicker (little metal thing that makes a clicky sound which indicates that the dog is doing it right, precipitating a tasty reward) - breaking the tasks into tiny, achievable segments and allowing the dogs to work out for themselves what it is that you want them to do, rewarding them grandly at each stage. It is a very gentle way of training, and the dogs LOVE it. I thought it would take ages for Claude to pick up all this training but, within half an hour of using these methods with him at home, he was getting the hang of it nicely. By the end of the first month of using these methods, Claude could do the following:
- Touch his nose to J, when he was having a meltdown. No mean feat with all the yelling and flailing around that goes with this. The point is not for Claude to make like Nanny McPhee and stop the tantrum, but rather for this little soft nudge to give a nanosecond of a pause in J's distress, allowing me to get in and calm him down. Startlingly effective.
- Walk on a double lead, with J holding onto one handle and me holding the other - a total revelation for me to have all the family going in the same direction at the same time!
- Stylishly model new or offensive items of clothing that J is refusing to wear (a school tie being a good example), causing much amusement all round and the eventual acceptance of the clothes from J.
- Demonstrate with gusto how to sample a new, unfamiliar food type.
- Play the keyboard with his nose!!!! Ok, so not strictly what D for D had advised but me and G had a high old time teaching him this and he was mighty proud of his musical prowess!
With or without specialist training, Claude would always have been an exceptional dog. But the training showed us how to get the most out of the relationship between a child with autism and a hound. And that is the point. It is a relationship. An exceedingly strong one - not always noticeable to the naked eye but a very unconditional one. Most of us have so many relationships - with family, friends, teachers, colleagues, people on the street, etc, etc - that we can hardly count them. J's "tribe" is much smaller than most - and will probably remain so for the rest of his life. Give him some pens and paper or a child to play with and he'd go for the first option every time. This is who he is and, although what he lacks in natural understanding of human relationships, he will be able to learn by rote in the future, I believe that he will always be happiest with just a few trusted tribe-members and Claude is certainly one of the chosen few. That dog is truly part of our family and, looking at him as we speak - fast asleep, legs in the air, jowls dream-eating something delicious, Sass snuggled into his neck, I couldn't imagine any more effective "cure" for our family.
