| 330 East Coffee Street, Greenville, SC 29601 |
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| Please help by supporting our program! Contributions are tax deductible. |
Why did we choose a focus on Autism?
Dogs For Disabled didn't set out looking for chances to work with autism. The disorder more or less came looking for us. In the
late 1990s, when questions about service dogs for autism were rapidly increasing, Dogs For Disabled was already pretty well
conditioned to considering new questions. We made a point of trying to view all new questions as: "Hmmm....wonder if that could
be made to work," Rather than: "Oh, no, we don't do that here."
In 1999, one particular mother, Kelly Capers, approached the program with a very complicated "job description" for which she
wanted to train a dog. Her son had autism, and she, being a long-time breeder and a handler of many different dogs, absolutely
knew something should be possible. She just didn't know how, or where, and during a two-year search, she had been turned
down by many other programs. But she wasn't going to give up--and she had a very interesting concept. When Kelly and Dogs
For Disabled put their resources together, they realized they had defined some significant pieces to the puzzle of service dogs
working with autism. Why not give it a try?
In 2001 Dogs for Disabled, then under the training direction of Julie Nye, began work with "Larissa," the first dog chosen for the
Assistive-Search-Alert (ASA) job. Larissa was certified in 2002 for public assistance and 2003 for search and rescue. More
details of that project are are available in Chapter 14 of the book, "Practical Partners," available from Fieldstone Hill Press.
In the last five years other ASA dogs have been successfully trained and placed with in a variety of different home situations,
proving that the concept can be realistically applied. In 2007 Dogs for Disabled made the decision to focus primarily on the
disability of autism, and thus altered the program name to Dogs for Autism. We hope to greatly increase the use of service dogs
to benefit individuals and families coping with autism. We hope to see the ASA dogs become far more common not only in the
Greenville area, but in many other locations. Part of our program's purpose and mission statement is to document and package
the training protocol for ASA dogs into a format that can be made available to other programs in any geographic area with
sufficient training expertise.
German Shepherds, from proven and specially-selected working lines, are DFA's most commonly used breed for a wide variety of
reasons. Some strengths this particular type are because of their genetic background as a herding dog. The concept of
containment of the "family pack" and awareness of property boundaries comes very naturally to them. Beyond that, they are
highly sensitive to context; it is a normal reaction of the breed to spot, and focus on, a new factor in almost any given
environment or situation, therefore it is extremely easy to encourage them to give an alert to specific problems. Overall, we
believe many factors favor German Shepherds for ASA work--just as most factors favor retrievers for the more typical service
dogs that work with mobility impairments.
Please visit us often as we expand this website to include more information about our progress with ASA dogs. And please
remember that both our current training projects and the ability to expand the use service dogs for autism will be
possible only through the support of friends who believe in the importance of the concept!
Dogs For Disabled didn't set out looking for chances to work with autism. The disorder more or less came looking for us. In the
late 1990s, when questions about service dogs for autism were rapidly increasing, Dogs For Disabled was already pretty well
conditioned to considering new questions. We made a point of trying to view all new questions as: "Hmmm....wonder if that could
be made to work," Rather than: "Oh, no, we don't do that here."
In 1999, one particular mother, Kelly Capers, approached the program with a very complicated "job description" for which she
wanted to train a dog. Her son had autism, and she, being a long-time breeder and a handler of many different dogs, absolutely
knew something should be possible. She just didn't know how, or where, and during a two-year search, she had been turned
down by many other programs. But she wasn't going to give up--and she had a very interesting concept. When Kelly and Dogs
For Disabled put their resources together, they realized they had defined some significant pieces to the puzzle of service dogs
working with autism. Why not give it a try?
In 2001 Dogs for Disabled, then under the training direction of Julie Nye, began work with "Larissa," the first dog chosen for the
Assistive-Search-Alert (ASA) job. Larissa was certified in 2002 for public assistance and 2003 for search and rescue. More
details of that project are are available in Chapter 14 of the book, "Practical Partners," available from Fieldstone Hill Press.
In the last five years other ASA dogs have been successfully trained and placed with in a variety of different home situations,
proving that the concept can be realistically applied. In 2007 Dogs for Disabled made the decision to focus primarily on the
disability of autism, and thus altered the program name to Dogs for Autism. We hope to greatly increase the use of service dogs
to benefit individuals and families coping with autism. We hope to see the ASA dogs become far more common not only in the
Greenville area, but in many other locations. Part of our program's purpose and mission statement is to document and package
the training protocol for ASA dogs into a format that can be made available to other programs in any geographic area with
sufficient training expertise.
German Shepherds, from proven and specially-selected working lines, are DFA's most commonly used breed for a wide variety of
reasons. Some strengths this particular type are because of their genetic background as a herding dog. The concept of
containment of the "family pack" and awareness of property boundaries comes very naturally to them. Beyond that, they are
highly sensitive to context; it is a normal reaction of the breed to spot, and focus on, a new factor in almost any given
environment or situation, therefore it is extremely easy to encourage them to give an alert to specific problems. Overall, we
believe many factors favor German Shepherds for ASA work--just as most factors favor retrievers for the more typical service
dogs that work with mobility impairments.
Please visit us often as we expand this website to include more information about our progress with ASA dogs. And please
remember that both our current training projects and the ability to expand the use service dogs for autism will be
possible only through the support of friends who believe in the importance of the concept!
Dogs For Disabled was founded in 1991 by internationally-known trainer Connie Cleveland. Based on her engineering
background, Connie always believed that dog training should make sense--and WORK--not only in a show ring, but against the
realistic background of daily life. All our trainers learned to use pragmatic effectiveness as the basis for measuring progress.
The Americans With Disabilities Act was new when we started. ASA dogs were far in the future. Everybody knew what a guide
dog was, but back then, even the concept of using a dog to help with a wheelchair or crutches took a lot of explaining. As the
years rolled along we learned (sometimes through the school of hard knocks) a lot about improvising training techniques to meet
the specific needs of individual clients.
DFD became a well known--small, but potent--training group, placing more than 200 dogs in jobs serving a wide variety of
disabilities, including Paraplegia, Quadriplegia, Spina Bifida, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinsons, amputation, substantial burns, and
brain injury. Graduate dogs have been placed in 11 states, South America, and Canada, earning Dogs For Disabled recognition
as one of the highest-quality training agencies in the country.
