DOGS THAT EMPOWER
Dogs have been guiding the blind, comforting the sick and calming the distressed for more than a century. There are nearly 16,000 dogs working as assistance animals in the U.S. Throw in therapy and emotional support dogs, and that number goes into the hundreds of thousands.
Cori, a Lab/golden retriever mix who teaches kids with disabilities how to swim, worked with a 4-year-old boy with autism who was terriwed of the water. “A nonverbal child is hard to reach,” says Judy Fridono, Cori’s owner and the founder of Escondido, Calif.–based Puppy Prodigies
(puppyprodigies.org). “A dog is better than a human teacher because the communication between dog and child is different. It’s more powerful.”
Since drowning is one of the leading causes of death for kids with autism, teaching them how to swim is not a luxury but a life-saver. Fridono asked the boy to throw a ball into the pool for Cori. The dog jumped into the pool to get the ball, and within minutes the boy was in the pool too, holding onto Cori’s jacket. The boy was swimming a few weeks later. There’s no denying it, says Fridono: “Dogs are magical beings.”
Lauren Armstrong certainly thinks so. The 22-year-old Ph.D. student in audiology was just paired in May with a golden Lab named Elroy to be her ears. Trained by nonprowt Canine Companions for Independence (cci.org) to assist the hearing impaired, Elroy has changed Armstrong’s life in many ways.
“He’s helped me become more independent and given me a new conwdence,” she says. “He wakes me up in the mornings to an alarm that I can’t hear, helps me with cooking and even when I am driving. Recently he alerted me to a police siren long before the car passed us!” Elroy goes with Armstrong to her audiology appointments and will attend her graduate school classes this fall in Knoxville, Tenn. Best of all, she says: Elroy has learned to alert her when her name is called at her local coffee shop. No more cold coffee!