Occasionally at Prodigal we receive a request for something out of the ordinary. If it is something we have experience with and feel we can produce the required results, we will take on a special task.

Just such an occasion arose in early 2006 when I was contacted by a young family with a son with autism. Autism is a huge spectrum of disorder and this young man was fortunate to be classified as high functioning. The situation, however, was that the youngster would occasionally wander away from their rural home.

The family had contacted other trainers with a request to train a dog to track this youngster, should he become separated from the family. No one was prepared to take the job on. My background training through my certifying organization, the American Society of Canine Trainers (ASCT) luckily included advanced courses in K9 tracking, including hard surface tracking.

Soon a dog was acquired by the family, a puppy. They began the job of raising him as their family pet/tracking dog with some guidance and consultation from Prodigal. There are tiny and subtle differences in how one raises a tracking dog, and to their enormous credit, the family did a wonderful job.

When the dog reached 12 months of age, training began in earnest. Numerous consultations between myself and the President of ASCT, and other instructors/ trainers within the organization took place. I am forever grateful for their input, given selflessly any time it was requested.

A combination of the family doing such an excellent job raising the dog, input from ASCT, and some old fashioned hard work produced a wonderful addition to the family in question, a dog with a high success track ratio, and hopefully a feeling of security for their everyday lives.

During the course of events, it was brought to our attention on more than one occasion that this discipline in tracking would also be useful for locating Alzheimer′s patients, yet another special situation…

© Prodigal Service Dogs 2006-2007. All rights reserved.