Posts tagged "autism"

Good news for Scooter Givens of Hillsboro, Ore. -- the 10-year-old autistic boy no longer has to leave his service dog, Madison, at home when he goes to school. After a three-year battle with the Givens family, Hillsboro School District officials have decided to allow Scooter to bring Madison to class at Patterson Elementary for a trial period.

According to KATU Hillsboro, the debate over this pup hinged on whether Madison was, in fact, a "service dog" or a "therapy dog." Though the distinction may seem minor from the outside looking in, the service dog factor is apparently no small issue in the eyes of the law.

Though service dogs are covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act, therapy dogs aren't. And after evaluating Madison's specialized training, as well as the potential costs of a federal civil rights lawsuit, the Hillsboro School District caved.

After looking at the important safety role that Scooter's best friend plays in his life, we think the term service dog clearly applies. For example, Madison has been trained to detect Scooter's sometimes violent tantrums and prevent them before they start.

"Madison's trained to touch him or nuzzle him and kind of distract him from that," Scooter's mom Wendy told KATU.

Plenty of parents and teachers would swear that service dogs are lifesavers for autistic kids, but in scientific circles, anecdotal evidence doesn't go very far. For that reason, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is offering grants worth $500,000 per year to researchers studying the impact of animals on children's health and development, reports the New York Times. The program is a partnership between the NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Development and the Waltham Center for Pet Nutrition, a division of the Mars candy and pet-food company.

It has long been known that the presence of a pooch has a calming influence on many people, according to Pris Taylor, the director of Autism Service Dogs of America (ASDA). "Children with autism have difficulty with emotional relationships. The kids relate better to dogs. The children learn empathy," Taylor told Paw Nation. "We find kids don't have as many tantrums and meltdowns. Anecdotally, speech has increased with the presence of the dog." An autistic child may talk more not only to the dog itself, but also to other people, often about the dog. For a disease characterized by social isolation, that's huge.