Autism Assistance Dogs
Autism Assistance Dogs support Autistic individuals. A working Assistance Dog may be identified based on the purple K9Assistance vest that it wears while on duty!
Dog training
Like all other accredited Assistance Dogs, Autism Assistance Dogs undergo extensive training with internationally accredited schools that takes up to 2 years, and includes extensive obedience training.
At the end of which, these Assistance Dogs are trained to perform three or more tasks to support their Autistic handler, they are also extremely well behaved in public.
Autism Assistance Dogs can:
Offer Early Alerts to sensory overload and prevent escalation to meltdown
Autism Assistance Dogs could offer an early alert for a potentially distressing situation.
The Autism Assistance Dog could be trained to recognise and provide an early alert in this manner to their handler rapidly blinking his eyes or any other early signals of escalating anxiety, which might lead to a melt down.
For an Autistic person, these can be signs that something in the environment is causing their anxiety to rise.
When an Assistance Dog alerts the handler to this situation, the person has the opportunity to work out what it is in the environment that is causing this increased anxiety and take steps to avoid further escalation.
An Assistance Dog can be taught to respond to different triggers according to the needs and presentation of the individual handler.
Guiding
Autism Assistance Dogs can recognise disorienting elements in the environment or when their handler unknowingly walks into a potentially dangerous situation.
The Autism Assistance Dog can guide their Autistic handler away to a quiet place when the handler begins displaying stress-induced behaviours, or on command by the autistic handler. The Autism Assistance Dog also helps to guide the Autistic handler through crowds.
Grounding / Deep Pressure
Autism Assistance Dogs can also perform ‘grounding’ tasks, like deep pressure stimulation, even when the Autistic handler is already in a state of overwhelm, by using their paws, head or bodies to apply firm but gentle pressure to the Autistic handler’s body. This helps to diffuse the intensity of sensory overload and bring the Autistic person back to conscious, balanced self-regulation.
Autistic individuals who are clinically diagnosed as being part of the spectrum may benefit strongly from working with an Assistance Dog.
Autism Assistance Dogs are not the same as emotional support dogs. Autistic individuals may benefit from having an Assistance Dog in many specific ways, all of which are based on well-researched, scientific evidence.
K9Assistance will continue to work with the government to include widening public access for Autism Assistance Dogs in public spaces, as it is our founding principle to provide Assistance Dogs that aligns with the definition of disabilities in Singapore, including the Physically disabled, D/deaf and hard of Hearing, Blind and Vision Impaired, and the Autistic.
