The Golden Bridge: Selecting and Training Assistance Dogs for Children With Social, Emotional, and Educational Challenges

In The Golden Bridge, Patty Dobbs Gross provides both personal and professional advice on how specially bred and trained dogs help to facilitate communication for children with autism and other developmental disabilities. This important information compendium is a guide for parents dealing with the social, emotional, and educational issues related to raising children with challenges. Myths and labels concerning autism are explored, examined, and redefined. While focused on children, the advice that Gross shares will be immensely helpful for anyone involved in breeding, raising, and training dogs to mitigate any type of disability at any age. The Golden Bridge provides advice about living with autism, animal-assisted therapy and autism, training an assistance dog to work with a child with autism or a developmental disability, and using an assistance dog to deal with a child's grief. This impressive volume also contains a vast list of resources, including Web sites, for follow-up information, a section on books about autism, and a directory of assistance dog providers.

Patty Dobbs Gross is the executive director of a nonprofit organization that places assistance dogs with children who face special challenges. She earned her B.A. in psychology from the University of Massachusetts and her Master's Degree from the University of New Hampshire in writing. She is a published author of Dancing in the Rain and an award winning producer of the television programs Northern Lights and Raising Your North Star. Gross has compiled research on canine behavioral genetics, animal-assisted therapy, and children with autism.