My son was a prisoner in our home... this dog set him free
It was a moment Edel Shaw would never forget — her five-year-old son Jack standing on the white line in the middle of the main road by their house as a car whizzed past him.
Jack had done his usual bolting act from his house in Portarlington, Co Laois, much to the horror of his parents Edel and Dermot.
There was nothing for it but to increase the security in their home in a desperate effort to keep their beloved boy safe.
‘We weren’t completely sure Jack had autism until he was about three. He is our oldest child so we didn’t really know what signs to look for and lots of people would say ‘boys are slower than girls’ or things like that,’ Edel explains.
‘We put a lot of it down to just being a boy more so than anything else but the experts must have noticed because they first referred us for a speech and language review when he was around 18 months. ‘They didn’t mention autism to us until he was just gone three.’
But after his diagnosis, a serious issue arose for Edel and Dermot when it came to caring for Jack.
‘Jack was what they would typically call a bolter or a runner,’ Edel says. ‘I used to say he was like Forrest Gump when he runs from one part of America to the other except Jack likes water, so he wouldn’t have stopped when he got to the ocean.
‘He had no sense of danger and any time we took him anywhere he would try to pull away from us. It was easy in the early years — he was a toddler so you expect to keep them in a buggy, you expect to keep them in a wrist strap so that they don’t get away.
BUT as Jack got older, things became even more difficult, especially as his little brother Oisin arrived when he was three.
‘As he got that little bit older — four, five, six — when that sense of danger, and that sense of road awareness should have developed, it didn’t in Jack,’ Edel says. ‘He didn’t know that there was any danger at all. He was too big for a buggy, when we tried to use a wrist strap at this stage it looked inappropriate and out of place.
‘But he still had that desire, no matter where we were, to attempt to pull away from us and run.
‘What we discovered was that he actually thought it was a bit of a game, he found it funny to see mummy and daddy running after him and trying to catch him.
‘But the challenge we had was he would do that in a car park, in
a playground, wherever he was. He got faster than us and he could pull away from us in the blink of an eye and be gone into the middle of the road.
‘We had a number of near misses where he got out of our house and made it to the white lines in the middle of the road and a car went flying past him. He was five years old at that stage.’
Edel admits it got to the point where it was so hard to keep Jack safe that they stopped taking him out of the house.
‘His desire to bolt became so difficult to manage that we just stopped taking him out’ she explains. ‘We had three locks on the front door so that he couldn’t get out, all the windows were locked to make sure he didn’t climb out and our back garden is 100% enclosed so that he couldn’t get out there either when he was outside.
‘He had no concept of danger and perhaps a desire for adventure. We couldn’t go to our local playpark like any other family as one end of it opens up onto the River Barrow and it was too dangerous.
‘He would make a beeline for the main road or the river so we stopped going. It meant he was cut off from his community, his society and was confined completely to the house.’
Instead either Edel and Dermot, who both work for pharmaceutical companies, would take Jack’s younger brother Oisin out alone while the other would stay at home.
Until, that is, Edel had an idea
that would change the family’s life forever.
‘In about 2009 when Jack was six I heard about the Autism Assistance Dogs programme. I applied without my husband knowing and I had to tell him when I got a phone call saying we had gone to the top of the waiting list.’
Trainers came to meet the family to assess their suitability.
‘We had a chat about what kind of child Jack was and why I thought a dog would work. I knew he loved dogs, he had a real desire to hug dogs. I didn’t know whether being physically attached to the dog would make a difference to Jack but we were at the point where we couldn’t go out as a family of four, we weren’t going out as a family of four.’
Thorpe, a Golden Newfie, was chosen by the trainers to be Jack’s companion and had to be schooled in how to react with the child.
‘’Jack does a very high pitched vocal squeal so they started to train the dog Thorpe to tolerate this — this trainer was driving round Cork in a car with a recording of Jack screaming to try and desensitise Thorpe so she wouldn’t be startled.
‘Jack likes squeezy hugs so he’s quite sensory so the dog was being prepared for that too.’
Edel and Dermot went for three days’ training with Thorpe too as it was their commands that the dog would listen to. ‘Then she came home with us and almost immediately we could see the bond between Thorpe and Jack.
‘As we expected, Jack was giving her hugs and getting down on the floor with her as we had hoped he would.
‘A few days later we did an attachment walk with the trainer to see how Jack would go and from the first day it was wonderful. Jack was really happy to wear the belt and he was really happy to hold the handle on the dog’s harness. Despite us being in control of the dog, he felt he was attached to her, giving her instructions, even though really it was us in control,’ Edel says.
At first there were small walks round the local estate, then Jack progressed to his local park.
‘We tried to slowly build up Jack’s confidence in having the dog with him, and then our confidence with bringing Jack out to places we hadn’t been before,’ Edel adds.
‘We worked steadily over the years. Just to be able to go out for a walk to the lovely country park near our house and walk around the grounds and the duck lake as a family of four was something we hadn’t ever done because before Thorpe, we weren’t able to get Jack to stay with us and not go running either for the water or for the roads. And that’s where our adventure started.’
Soon there were other family outings — to autism-friendly cinema screenings, ten pin bowling, plus Thorpe even went to autismfriendly shows.
‘Where Jack went, Thorpe went too,’ Edel says. He was calmer in his behaviour and his desire to run was diminished because he liked to be able to touch and hug and pet Thorpe and be near her.’
Thorpe became an essential part of the Shaw household but due to the fact that €22,000 is needed to train every assistance dog, the AADI is one of the charities being assisted by this year’s Woodie’s Heroes event.
For the past month, staff at stores around the country have been collecting for ADDI, Hand in Hand, ISPCC Childline and Temple Street Children’s Hospital.
A team of Woodie’s Heroes will also undertake the gruelling task of cycling 1,600km around the country over five days, calling into each store to collect their Woodie’s fundraising cheque until their final stop in Tallaght on August 23. You can help too by donating via woodies.ie/heroes-2019.
Now, aged 16, Jack is able to do some things without Thorpe. The family have experiences like any other together, from holidays to shopping — something Jack initially refused to do.
Thorpe is getting on in years and will soon be finished her working life. But she will stay with the Shaws as a very important member of the family.
Edel says: ‘Thorpe will stay with us when her coat is retired. And the Shaws have everything to thank their wonderful dog for as she has given so much to them.
‘Thorpe gave us the ability to live again as a family of four,’ Edel says. ‘She opened up the world for Jack too. He went from being a prisoner in his own home to becoming the confident young man he is today.
‘Jack still needs us with him everywhere he goes but in the last year or so he has gone to the cinema, shopping and even to music concerts without Thorpe. We hope one day he will be able to do things independently.’
And the Shaws know they have Thorpe to thank for that.