Our Founder & Clinical Director Jamie McGillivary is full of amazing ideas to help individuals with autism and their families. Her vision to help parents and caregivers cope with their child’s diagnosis and reclaim their joy is the foundation of how Healing Haven started.
She saw the need to continue to support children with autism beyond the typical ABA therapy age of 8 years old, when most providers end services. So our second clinic serves students from 8-16 years old with age-appropriate therapies and pre-vocational skill building.
Enter Healing Haven Therapy Dogs
Another vision of Jamie’s is to provide therapy dog programs for the students at Healing Haven. Therapy Dogs are different from Service Dogs, which are trained to provide specific support for individuals with disabilities or medical needs such as visual or hearing difficulties, seizure disorders, mobility challenges, diabetes, etc.
Therapy dogs receive training but have completely different jobs than service dogs. They must have friendly, easy-going personalities and stable temperaments. They provide psychological or physiological therapy to individuals other than their owners/handlers. Typically, they visit hospitals, schools, daycare centers, group homes, hospices, nursing homes and rehab centers. Unlike service dogs, therapy dogs will interact with a variety of people while they are on-duty. And maybe one of the best features: petting a therapy dog is allowed!
The role of therapy dogs is to react and respond to people and their environment, under the guidance and direction of their owner. Therapy dogs can help to improve a person’s social, cognitive and emotional functioning. They can also help desensitize kids who have a fear of dogs. Therapy dogs can provide comfort and also help manage stress in kids with autism, not to mention the staff caring for them! And research indicates that social behaviors in children who have autism temporarily improve after even a short play period with a live animal (versus a toy).
Meet Winston & Huxley
Jamie purchased two adorable Golden Doodle puppies back in April and they are wrapping up their first three-week intensive training as therapy dogs. Here are a few pics from their recent training:
The next step after training is for Winston & Huxley to pass the Canine Good Citizen Test. The CGC is a 10 step test involving specifics tasks. A few of the tasks include accepting a friendly stranger, sitting politely for petting, walking through a crowd, and reaction to distractions. And for those interested, Winston & Huxley received their training at the Shiloh K9 Obedience Training & Boarding Center in Linwood, MI.
The staff are looking forward to when Winston and Huxley are ready to come “work” at Healing Haven! We will continue to post updates on them over our social channels, so be sure to follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook!