Q&A #7: Autism Service Dogs

[chaoticidealism]

Q: Have you ever considered using a service dog? I have heard that people are training dogs to assist people with autism now. What are your thoughts about this?
- Jen

Comments

[chaoticidealism]

Hmm... You know, with cats, I would say the same: Adult cats are easier to adopt and deal with than kittens. Tiny, at nine months, is the youngest cat I've ever adopted. My parents adopted kittens when I was a girl, but personally, I've always thought that adult cats, with their crazy kitten days behind them, were much nicer. You can get to know them as a quasi-equal rather than having to "mother" them.

I was mostly thinking of puppies because that way, I wouldn't have to re-train anything. I've lived with dogs before--my roommates had them--and I've done some training. One of my roommates' dogs, Mercy, had some issues from having had a bad owner before. But I've never owned a dog, and that does make a world of difference. As far as I know, the major part of training a dog is to make sure the dog can trust you and knows what you want it to do. Maybe it's just that I trust myself--inexperienced or not--more than I trust the sort of people who would willingly leave an adult dog at the county animal shelter.

I can deal with feline behavior problems. I've had no trouble with "vicious" cats or cats that "never used the litter box" or cats that were nervous or even supposedly feral. (Tiny? Yeah. NOT feral.) I get cats. But I don't get dogs near as well, and I don't trust myself yet to work with a dog with behavior problems on the level that I usually see in my rescue cats.