The story behind our gorgeous Autism assistance dog ...

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When you read this... http://mycaninecompanion.blogspot.ie/

The men in my life

Looking good lads :)

Just keep swimming

So, I have written before about Diddles interest in swimming from an early age. He is a water baby yet he has not moved on from the arm bands stage. Mostly because his attention span was so short and it was just something he enjoyed doing alone (like most things really). Now that he is a little more verbal and his receptive speech has improved we have decided to take the plunge and get him one to one swimming lessons. It is so difficult to find one particular activity that he truly enjoys without anxiety creeping into his head and ruining his good time! So for the moment it's swimming and we are going to attempt to keep his interest in it and harness this natural ability he has. I watched him tonight at his first lesson. He got into the pool without anyone giving him any direction. He paddled in his floatie suit from the deep end to the shallow end paying absolutely no attention to the instructor for the first ten minutes or so. Then every so often there was a little glance in her direction. He was warming to her. She brought out some toys the first of which was a ball she threw into the water. Diddles insisted "NO BALL!" She then suggested these funky little water weights and he refused them too. She began to play along side Diddles, parallel play if you like and sure enough when he realised what the purpose of this thing was he was straight over interacting with her, lots of eye contact and giggles and answering her questions with one or two word answers. Then after 20 minutes he was actually commenting without any prompting "oh that's a big splash in the water". Em ... eight words in a sentence is just so much of an achievement for him. He has oodles of ability but unless he warms to you, you are just never going to see it! Diddles is six and a half now and his speech is finally coming, social interaction is his most challenging obstacle and it's finally really clear to us that he does want to over come it he just needs people to give him a little time! So until people can realise that he'll just keep swimming!

Diddles & Tobias

I really I have to stop leaving it so long between blog posts!!

Life is going pretty well lately for Diddles. He is coming along great with school. He is starting to read which is just the most amazing sound to hear. His sleeping habits have improved a HUGE amount since being put on melatonin. There are still some nights this does not help in the slightest but thank god they are few and far between. He is sleeping! For the first time in his life he is getting a good night sleep, which means he is less anxious and has a longer attention span. Also we have finally got our gorgeous assistance dog Toby home from his training in Cork, he has been gone for almost five months which in kid/dog years is like ... well.. forever. They had their first attachment walk just yesterday and it went absolutely brilliantly! It is such a relief because we just did not know what to expect. Diddles reactions to situations are very unpredictable, but in this case he was so comfortable with his dog. We've had Toby since he was eight fluffy weeks old and watched him grow from a clumsy puppy into a hunk of an adult Golden retriever, he is so gentle with the kids! We puppy walked him ourselves and to see him come through his official training with My Canine Companion  is just so rewarding. He's not just an assistance dog to us he's our Toby.