Cody and Nina

Our son Cody was having great difficulties as he has autism, epilepsy and is selectively mute. We felt there was nothing left to try (speech, behaviour therapy, alternative school placement which offered specialised behaviour support) all with some improvement. But Cody’s special school hours were reduced to four hours a day due to his anxiety and sensory overload.

We started our Smart Pup journey by researching assistance dogs for our son and Smart Pups was the best choice.

Since having our beautiful Smart Pup Nina, she has been very busy keeping Cody settled out in public especially as we are spending a lot of time at hospitals and a nursing home visiting family. We did this for a few hours at a time every day for two months.

We have managed to take Cody off all the anxiety medication he has been on since he was four years old. The medication had been increasing as he got older but at 14 years old that ended.

Now we are watching Cody grow in confidence and starting to use his words to engage with Nina and take responsibility for her. Just being out in the community without the stress of wondering what could happen; as if Cody was stressed he would run onto the road without watching for cars. We can’t thank Smart Pups enough