Asha's Dog

Asha's family have been busy fundraising to raise enough money to buy him a support dog from Service Dogs Europe to help him cope with some of the difficulties that he faces every day. The four Southport Rotary clubs agreed to support their efforts and today, the four club presidents met up with Asha and his family to add £1,000 to their fund.

I have taken the following from the fund raisers facebook page at

Myself, my daughter Kim and a group of friends are fundraising to meet the costs of an Autism dog via Service Dogs Europe for my son Asha, who is 14 years old.
Asha has severe autism and a learning disability. He attends an Autism Initiatives school but despite an excellent specialist education and a dedicated home life he finds day to day life skills exceptionally difficult, sometimes impossible to manage.

Autism Dogs are a vitally important resource because they provide a unique approach to dealing with the countless obstacles that families like ours tackle on a daily basis. Each dog is fully certified, trained to the highest standard and receive highly skilled one on one training to help with the specific needs of the child or adult handler. As well as being a best friend and companion, Asha's Autism dog will be trained to perform tasks tailored specifically to his individual needs i.e;
~ Calming/interruption of anxiety related repetitive behaviours, over-stimulation or meltdowns. The assistance dog will be task trained to use touch intervention (e.g. paw tap on foot or leg/paws on lap) and pressure intervention (e.g. step on foot/ lying across body) and mobility assistance when these potentially dangerous or self-injurious behaviours occur.
~ Asha is not able to sleep for more than a few hours at a time and gets up repeatedly throughout the night, usually ending up asleep on his bedroom floor. He wanders restlessly which presents various serious safety issues. The assistance dog can interrupt and divert night time wandering, alerting me if necessary. The dog sleeping in his room, or on his bed will be a huge comfort and a focus to stay put.
~ The assistance dog will be able to accompany Asha everywhere. Necessary medical appts that currently cause severe anxiety, often resulting in complete refusal to leave his room. To assist in visits to the shops, cafes and the local village, as well as days out with the family. These take a lot of planning and can be difficult for a variety of reasons, not least because Asha does tend to be easily distracted and tend to wander and can easily become disorientated. He has no danger awareness. The dog will also be trained to track and find by scent in the event of Asha ever becoming lost.

Although the dog will work primarily with Asha, his older sister Chelsea also has autism. She has epilepsy, severe learning difficulties and hemiplegia. She uses a wheelchair for mobility and has very different needs to Asha. Chelsea is 22 and lives at home full time, cared for by myself, with loads of help and support from my eldest daughter Kim, her partner Rob and a small team of three very dedicated friends and carers, Shelly, Emma and Aaron who work with Chelsea at home. The service dog will be trained to walk with the wheelchair, accompanying Chelsea out on days when Asha is in school.

As any family of children with severe special needs or disabilities will be aware, it can be incredibly stressful and tiring striving to communicate, amuse, entertain, calm and care for them twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. There will definitely be a certain comfort in knowing that there is a resident helper on duty at all times, and the unconditional love, lack of judgement and inherent patience of these remarkable dogs will make a world of difference.

The cost of training an Autism dog is understandably high and so we're reaching out to friends, family and anybody else who would like to support our cause.
If you are able to help in any way, whether it be a donation or support and time in our fundraising efforts, any contribution however small will be hugely appreciated!!!!!