Dogs and Pencils..

I mentioned before that I've been feeling guilty about the dogs and while I have been better about having them in, training them, loving on them and all those other things dogs like - I still feel like I should be doing better. Then, this weekend, I read an article about how these autistic kids have been benefiting enormously from self-trained service dogs. So, of course, I got a brilliant idea. We have 2 very easily trainable dogs that the kids love to spend time with. While the dogs will never be true service dogs, why haven't I assigned a dog to each kid to take care of and bond with? Even if we could get Minnie (the mastiff) to be able to calm or point out when to T1 when she's starting to get her engine too high by nudging her or licking her hand, wouldn't that be cool??  I realize this is a rather lofty idea, but I'm going to give this plan a week or 2 to see what happens. Both kids were VERY excited about being responsible for 1 dog each and chose their dog by preference (and thankfully they each chose a different one). I told them they would be able to have the dogs with them as much as they wanted but they would need to keep them with them and on leash. The were sooo excited. I know the dogs love being with the kids, so hopefully this plan will work out.

I will soon be posting a picture of T1 and her newest accomplishment at OT. She is SO excited  - and she should be - she's been working on this skill for almost 2 years now and FINALLY got it!

In completely unrelated topics, there are about 700 different kinds of pencils. When you have a kid who is OCD and has sensory issues - among the other issues - pencils can cause such a pain in the rear. Sooooo, for the 20th time, we've found yet another new kind of pencil to try to keep her from pushing her the pencil through the paper to make it "darker". If it's not dark enough she goes over and over and over what she's written and then can't get started yet. After looking at 3 different stores and online - we have discovered black graphite pencils! So far, she loves these and doesn't feel compelled to obsess about the color and darkness of her print. Hopefully this will keep her from stalling out as much when she's doing her school.