Autistic Children warm to Canine companions
2019-07-26 13:54:46 China Daily Mo Hong'e
Wu Qi trains his dogs to better interact with people. (Photo/CHINA DAILY)
Wu Qi was debilitatingly shy when he was very young and refused to talk to most people until one day he found a newborn puppy in a trash can.
Now, the 38-year-old is cheerful, optimistic and has become known as a "dog whisperer", an animal behavior expert and a founder of China's first animal-assisted therapy program. Wu is also called "Uncle Dog" by many autistic children.
After he found the puppy, the two became good friends. He took care of the dog through elementary and high school until he went to Nanjing University in Jiangsu province, in his native Zhejiang province, to further his studies.
"I often talked to the dog and shared my life with it. It changed my introverted personality and helped make me the person I am today," he said.
Wu was heartbroken when the dog died peacefully at home. After he graduated from the university in 2003, he owned another dog and learned how to care for animals in a professional manner, including how to train them to better fit their unique environments and work together with humans.
He left his job as a computer games designer to enter the pet sector-a career decision that provided him with sufficient time to be with animals.
Wu's father, a civil servant, and his mother, a teacher, were strongly opposed to his decision to quit a well-paid job in order to raise animals. They thought his new occupation was "humiliating" for a well-educated man, and wept when they talked to him on the phone.
Wu continued with his new career, but encountered many difficulties. He failed in running two pet shops, and in 2010, he had nothing to his name but six dogs.
Wu Qi, founder of China's first animal-assisted therapy program, trains a dog in Nanjing in July last year. [Photo/CHINA DAILY]
With friends' support, he started to run a pet-training school in Nanjing's Jianye district in 2011. To improve his dog-training skills, he visited experts in places such as the United States, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
He gradually learned the meanings of different sounds that dogs make, improved his training skills and became known in the industry. Television stations invited him on to their shows and he started to receive phone calls from audience members.
"Seven years ago, I received a call from a woman who asked if she could bring her son to the training school to see the dogs. She said the child loved dogs, and I agreed to her request," Wu said.
"But later I found it strange that the child was interested in nothing but the dogs. He refused to talk to me and ignored me. He only became active when the dogs were around.
"His mother later said that she hadn't told me about her son's autism in advance because she was afraid that I might discriminate against him."
Wu said this was his first experience of an autistic child, and it reminded him of his introverted boyhood and how his dog had changed him. "I started to think that dogs could be channels for us to communicate with autistic children," he added.
He started to visit psychologists and teachers in special schools for autistic children, learned about animal-assisted therapy, or AAT, and contacted many institutions to offer his help.
As he expected, some institutions refused his assistance and said that they had never heard of such a therapy. Some even thought that he was a fraud.
"While AAT had been practiced in some Western countries for more than 100 years, few Chinese had heard about it or shown an interest in adopting it. Some institutions that knew about the therapy were also worried that it might not be sufficiently safe," Wu said.
A staff member and Wu Qi perform a children's palliative treatment program with Wu's dogs at Children's Hospital of Soochow University, Jiangsu province, on International Children's Day. (Photo/CHINA DAILY)
Satisfactory results
The Nanjing Mingxin Education and Training Center for Children was among the first to welcome Wu and his dogs.
Some teachers at the center were afraid of the dogs when they visited, but decided to continue with the experiment after watching Wu interact with the animals.
Tao Jingjing, director of the 17-year-old center, said the experiment went well and the teachers were satisfied with the results.
"Many autistic children become active and excited when they see dogs," she said. "They are willing to get close to the animals, and some even try to touch them. Though some children are reluctant at first, they try to interact with the dogs after seeing other children having a great time with them.
"Almost all the children taking part in AAT have made progress. Now, the therapy, which we have once every month, is one of the center's most welcome activities."
Wu said that one boy who refused to have physical contact with others impressed him deeply. He tried to have more conservation and interaction with the boy during the therapy sessions, and after several classes, when Wu asked if he could have a hug, the boy agreed.
Wu pointed to some volunteers at the center and asked if the boy would give each of them a hug, and he agreed. Finally, he said to him, "Your mum works so hard every day to take care of you, will you hug her and say thank you?"
The mother burst into tears when her son went to hug her and whispered "thank you" to him.
"Although autistic children seldom want to communicate with people, most of them are interested in animals and talk to me about giving orders to those that are well-trained. In this way, we increase the interaction with the children," Wu said.
He added that he and his team have also designed training sessions to improve the children's conversation, social skills and responsiveness.
Xiao Yanfen, the mother of autistic twins, said her boys have made significant progress after receiving AAT.
"They were very active and could not stop moving around, no matter how hard we tried to talk sense into them. Having two such children sometimes made me exhausted. But they listen to Wu when they're around the dogs, and gradually sit still.
"Now they can do some work quietly at school for a whole morning," the mother said.
Xing Shanshan, director of the Nanjing branch of Orpea, a highend French nursing home, said she and her team had tried hard to find professional AAT services in China.
"We have plenty of experience in using AAT to help treat the seniors," Xing said. "AAT is quite common in some developed countries in Europe, and in North America. I've seen our workers in France raise rabbits as AAT animals. Some institutions even have animals such as horses.
"After we opened our first branch in China in 2016, we looked for professional AAT services in the country for a long time until we learned about Wu."
Xing said AAT works well for many seniors at the home. Half of them need medical treatment and some have Alzheimer's disease. AAT for seniors simply involves them touching, hugging and talking to the animals.
"During this process, a primitive emotion is created when they and the creatures get along. The emotion, although simple, is profound," Xing said
Huang Kemin, 85, has been attending AAT sessions at Orpea for more than a year. She looks forward to seeing the animals and waits for them at the gate to the training room.
"The trained dogs prefer the elderly to workers at the home," she said. "I like having them on my lap and cuddling them.
Xing said: "Some seniors may be worried or frightened by the dogs, but after spending some time with them, they start to like the trained animals. We're also looking for other teams on the Chinese mainland that provide AAT animals other than dogs, but so far have had no success.
"The country is still in the initial stages of AAT research, and we hope that more people and animals will join in the therapy, as it helps with the recovery process for children and the elderly. There is great demand for the therapy, and the market is huge."
According to a recent report by the Wucailu Autism Research Institute in Beijing, the incidence of autism in children in China rose from 1 in 88 in 2009 to 1 in 45 by April this year.
More than 10 million people in the country have autism spectrum disorder, including more than 2 million children younger than 12. This developmental disorder affects communication and behavior.
Moreover, the Blue Book on Geriatric Health: China's Elderly Health Report (2018), released in January, showed that the number of people age 60 and older in China from 2000 to 2017 rose from 126 million to 241 million. Their proportion of the total population rose from 10.2 percent to 17.3 percent.
A staff member and Wu Qi perform a children's palliative treatment program with Wu's dogs at Children's Hospital of Soochow University, Jiangsu province, on International Children's Day. (Photo/CHINA DAILY)
Basic qualities
Tao, from the Nanjing Mingxin center, said: "We tried AAT once before we got in touch with Wu. A teacher at the center had a Golden Retriever and arranged for it to spend time with our autistic children. Although the children liked the dog, the animal was frightened and did not cooperate. We had to drop the plan due to safety concerns."
Wu said this example illustrates the difference between ordinary pets and trained AAT animals. "Not all dogs can become AAT animals. They should have some basic qualities, including a mild temperament, the desire to interact with people, and the willingness to receive training," he said.
Dogs with these qualities must receive systematic training to avoid becoming overly sensitive to the environment, and it usually takes one year for a dog to become a qualified AAT animal.
Such training costs more than 100,000 yuan ($14,530), and not all the dogs that receive it can become qualified AAT animals.
Wu once had more than 50 dogs and 30 trainers, because the high cost and the energy required forced him to find alternative ways to publicize the therapy, instead of doing it all by himself.
"I decided to share my training techniques with more people to publicize AAT," he said. "I also invited more volunteers to participate in the therapy. Now, we have groups in large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou (capital of Zhejiang).
"Our goal is to establish 10 volunteer groups in China. Meanwhile, we have strict criteria for choosing the volunteers and their dogs.
"I think that developing volunteers and inviting more families to take part in the therapy is the right way to develop AAT in China."
Tao said, "There is almost no AAT research in China," adding that she wants to compile a book with Wu to introduce the therapy to more families. "It should be known by and benefit more people in need," she said.
In addition to helping autistic children and Alzheimer's patients, Wu and his team offer assistance to some physically and mentally challenged people. They also take part in a children's palliative treatment program at Children's Hospital of Soochow University in Jiangsu.
Wu is attempting to contact more universities and institutions overseas, and said the University of Edinburgh in Scotland has been in touch with him about introducing advanced AAT to China. This program will be launched in September.