Dutch Shepherd Forum

We have been working my son's communication system, hard. At home, we'd always let him pick either sign, sound or picture exchange. But over the last few weeks, we've pushed picture exchange to get him over a major hump (ok, so I'm tired of getting beat up.)

So this morning Bramble came to me, but he wanted her to stay in the room with him. Since he can't give her a command, and she can't see a sign, I decided to add the voice command to his device. My initial thought was that today at training, I would ask us to teach her to respond to the voice out put. However, as soon as the voice out put said "Bramble come", she came. The same with sit down. I hadn't added stay or settle as I didnt think it would go so well.

The one she didn't understand is "free". Which makes sense as the voice out put isn't as animated as her free.

This was totally unexpected. I really expected to have to spend weeks linking the sound to the commands.

Not a good idea. A dog is only supposed to be commanded by someone that understands it's needs.

I can see the point, but, really, she has followed his commands for a while. She made the association between his sound approximation of "night night" way back before she started listening to me. She also obeys his variation of signs for the commands. Under direction, he does feed her and let her in and out to do her business.

He also sometimes help train her. During some training sessions he likes to go over her obedience (with cues from me.)

I think this is just one of those things that probably wouldn't work with other dogs, but Bramble accepts from her boy.

Oh he's a challenge alright . This year in particular has been rough due to agression.

Bramble is not exactly doing autism dog tasks.

Her primary task is alerting to migraines, though she can also read his moods far better than I can. My suspicion is she can smell the changes in his sweat that occur before an actual outburst. She naturally senses migraines 1-3 hours before we can't see them.

Having her walk with him does help give him focus when going thru transition spaces (which is really hard for him) and having the leash keeps something in his hands.

Her other tasks are to find him if he gets lost (we don't have an elopement issue like some families but its hard to find someone who can't respond to a call.) The trainer is going to have us add article search to help her use her nose instead of just the sound of his breathing. She is also being trained to retrieve items, in particular his headphones. And she is also starting to work on two variations of barking....one to go to my son and bark until a release command is given if the fire alarm goes off and when separated from me (or my mom) stay with my son and bark when she hears a command (basically respond to searchers.)

We don't have her involved in meltdowns as my kiddo might hurt her in those moments.