Our dog, Barley, should get some sort of medal or award or something. If this isn't the most awesome dog on earth, worthy of being named after a beer ingredient...
When you tell people that your kid is a flight risk, the usual response is a nervous laugh. They think you're cracking wise, making some joke about your kid being an inmate of some sort.
Having a bright though autistic daughter means having to say, 'no really, if you see her and don't see one of us, call us, it's serious.'
I'm too tired to give you the usual, verbose, explanation. This is a kid who can defeat locks that would stump Houdini. Also a very logical, literal-minded kid. Cars, why fear those? You buckle up, next thing you know you're getting chicken strips or maybe even ice cream. The problem is this kind of thought process doesn't necessarily lend itself to adequate caution regarding moving cars that you're not in.
My daughter has also, with astonishing alacrity, jumped our fence and walked in the back door of our neighbor's house and just started exploring. She's strong, fast, curious, and with few exceptions, utterly without fear.
So it's the middle of the night, and Barley is whining and bugging my wife like he's going to piss the rug right this second if she doesn't let him out. He bugs her over and over until she wakes up, grumpily stomps after him down the hall to find that the front door of our house is standing open. And our autistic daughter (who's sleep patterns don't even qualify as a 'pattern' at times), is out playing in the driveway.
If Barley hadn't woken my wife up, no telling where our kid would have wandered to. A kid who has way too limited language, for instance, to explain to a cop where she lives and why she's walking to the park or something at 3:00 a.m. If the dog was as dumb as he pretends at times, there's no way he would have been alarmed by this, but he's a herder, and is only really at ease when the whole herd is together. Preferably in the same room where he can watch and make sure.
We call him Barley, our dog faced boy. He is, incidentally, the only dog big or small our autistic daughter is not afraid of.
1 comment:
Wow. That's a helluva good story. And, I think, would make a great story.
My sister always tells me that there aren't enough books, stories, or movies about autistic children. My youngest nephew is autistic, and has many of the same patterns, and shares the same fearlessness that you've described your daughter to.
Dogs are miracles. A madman (literally) once said to me, "No one has ever explained to me how 'Dog' is 'God' spelled backwards. As funny as that was to laugh off, sometimes I think about it and realize that sometimes that statement isn't so far off.
Great story!
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