The Buddy System: Stories of 3 families & Autism Assistance Dogs

Last week I joined UConn Paws and Claws (which promotes the welfare of animals and educates the public about animal-related issues) for a fun documentary screening. We watched a documentary called The Buddy System. It tells the intimate stories of three families of Connecticut touched by autism, who experience meaningful change when a specially trained assistance dog comes into each of their lives.

I used to think that the symptoms of autism are the same for every patient. But in the documentary, the autistic children in every family was influenced by different problems. For instance, David has pervasive development disorder thus he has difficulty relating to people, objects, and events (lack of eye contact, pointing behavior, and lack of facial responses), Lydia was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, so it was hard for her to get to sleep, to stay asleep, and sleep earlier in the day, and Jack has problems with social skills that he want to have close relationships but didn’t know how, and he couldn’t understand emotions (his own and others’). That is, because Autism is a spectrum disorder each child is still very unique, in the degree they are affected and the things with which they need assistance.

In the story, the three families have been troubled by autism for a long time, and some of them almost lost confidence. Then, fortunately, they heard and learnt about autism assistance d

og (Basically, an autism assistance dog is a kind of ‘service dog trained to help individuals with autism gain independence and the ability to perform activities of daily living similar to anyone else). Then, each puppy is matched with a child and then trained to meet their specific needs. I was so touched by the smile on their face when the children saw their dog for the first time. I even thought that dogs understand these autistic children better than people. The children spent lots of time with their assistance dog every day, over time, they learnt to take care of the dogs by themselves. More importantly, over time, the autistic children also learnt how to get along with people.

From the first meeting of the child and the dog, this documentary has recorded the progress of each child and each family for two years. Everything has changed a lot for the three families. And every step they take together is leading to a magical future. One of the children made huge progress, and the other two of them can both communicate smoothly with people. I think it’s not that surprised that everyone loves dogs and families with dogs are happier than other families, but I never know that dogs can bring such big changes to autistic children.

In addition to this documentary, there are many movies about ‘service dogs in recent years. However, although there are some authorities in the world, under current regulations, training a service dog is a very difficult task. The law does not currently facilitate the training of professionals who serve dogs, so service dog trainers may not be able to complete training in public. This has become a paradox: the best place to train service dogs is in public places, because the environment in which they work in the future is like this. But the law does not allow such training.

Learn more about this documentary and its initiatives: https://www.buddysystemfilm.org/