Has anyone received an Autism service dog from 4paws?

Question

Have the people who've mentioned the safety concerns about tethering, seen adverse affects to this practise? I am a mother looking to get a service dog. Are there any companies NOT to get a dog from?

Thank you

Answer 1

If you contact 4paws they should be able to give you references (names & phone numbers) of homes where they have placed their dogs.

This way you can talk with people who have gotten their dogs from them and find out how they are doing, what their concerns are ... etc.

Answer 2

I wish I could help but I have no idea.  Repost this if you don't get any answers, hopefully someone out there has them.

Sorry

Answer 3

Tethering is a very controversial practice, as it is placing both the child and dog at risk. While I and many others who are concerned with tethering do sympathise with what parents are going through in trying to raise autistic children, we also have to consider the rights and needs of both of the child and the dog. Even if the dog does help, is it fair on the dog to create a situation of animal cruelty just so you as a parent can be helped.

We have heard of cases, which have been in the news of cases of children being draggged by dogs across school gyms when the dog got distracted by balls. We have seen first hand the effects on the dogs faces who look so demorialised it was hard to not step in and physically remove the dog ourselves.

While the Department of Justice has said that 3 person teams are legal, they have also stated that it is illegal to ask an organisation to control another persons service dog, which is exactly what is being asked of schools. In effect what the Department of Justice has said is that it is illegal to ask for the child to have the dog at school unless you can prove that the child is capeable of taking on 100% of the care of the dog, 100% of the time. Since it is obvious that young children, and especailly young children with autism are not capeable of doing so then it is illegal for these dogs to be at school.

I always hear that the parents are the handlers and the parents will always have the leash. This obviously does not happen at school, and further more websites of 4 paws and other autism service dog programs have pictures of their dogs tethered to childen in public places with no one holding the lead.

Dogs are living beings and as a result of that they will and do break training all the time. Only two months ago, I had a fully trained guide dog partnered with a totally blind person, from one of the top programs in the world, rip the harness out of the handlers hand and run across a four lane road to try and play with my service dog. Yes, this is an extreme situation, but dogs are living beings and all dogs break training at times. What if at the moment those photo's were being taken the dog decided to break it's training and run, the child would automatically be dragged and who knows where the child would be dragged too.

It is also true that no dog can ever be bite proofed. All dogs given enough provocation will bite, they have no other way of protecting themselves. Since children cannot and do not understand this, it is basic commonsense to the whole world to never leave children alone, unsupervised with a dog, and yet these programs encourage and in many cases insist that these dogs sleep in the child's bedroom. This is leaving a child unsupervised with a dog, and on top of that you are leaving an emotionally unstable child alone with a dog.

These dogs are specifically trained to believe that they are in charge of the child. In the dog world dogs have an automatic right to bite someone who does something they do not like if that person is below them in the pecking order. To say that the child feeds the dog, so the dog knows the child isn't below them is crazy, when the dog is trained to not listen to what the child says when it is tethered and to not follow if the child pulls on the tether. Either the child is in charge of the dog, or the dog is in charge of the child. Dogs cannot understand that sometimes it is one way and sometimes it is another. Further if the child is the one who feeds the dog, gives it treats, plays the best games with it, is the dog going to then ignore this great person if the parent asks it to ignore the child when it is tethered to it. If the child becomes number 1 in the dogs life, then the dog will automatically listen to the child and not the parent.

4 paws is propably the worse place that you could try to obtain a dog from. There are many many questions about the level of training the dogs have recieved and since most of their dogs come from pounds and shelters they have very unkown backgrounds, which is even more important when considering such a dog. Such dogs really need to come from stock which is incredibly carefully bred and raised to ensure that they have the strongest temperament possible and are capeable of withstanding huge amounts of stress.

A good program would have some level of affilitation with Assistance Dgos International and be striving for accreditiation with Assistance Dogs International which 4 paws is not.

4 paws recently attempted to take some dogs to New Zealand and the stuff ups they made just in trying to get these dogs on the plane, shows that they are not a program that really thinks ahead or is proactive in all that they do. A program knows the laws of the countries they are operating in and in the countries they are visiting and of the countries airlines that they would be flying on. 4 paws appears to have done no such research when trying to place these dogs, which have no public access anyway.

I am fully supportive of young children, and especailly those with disabilities including autism having dogs at home, I do not feel that these dogs belong in public. I feel that the best thing for you to do would be to acquire a skilled companion dog. These are basically pets who are reclassified from guide and service dog programs often for many minor reasons. Any good dog trainer could easily help you to train the dog to assit you to train the dog to assist you child at home. The best place to look for such a dog would be from guide dog programs, and the dogs that they are rehoming. The best guide dog programs are those that are affiliated with the International Guide Dog Federation.

If you do decide to ask a program for references, also specifically ask to speak to people who have not been satisfied. All programs, including the best guide dog programs do have unhapy people and if a program says otherwise, that would be a sure sign of the need to look elsewhere. What you want to find out from unhappy people is whether there is a real reason and concern that you should know about, or whether it is that the person was perhaps not really ready for a dog, etc. Getting a service dog is the biggest decision a person can ever make and their are hundreds of negatives that need to be fully considered. A good program should be willing to sit down with you to fully consider whether this is really something that is good for you and your family or not.

Please, please please fully consider all of your options before deciding on getting such a dog. This is not a decision to make lightly and it is one that could not just adversly affect your child, but also a dog, who is a living being.

I suggest you look at these websites;

http://www.autismvox.com/the-skies-arent...

http://servicedogcentral.org/content/nod...

http://servicedogcentral.org/content/nod...

http://www.iaadp.org/lassie.html