Temple Grandin: Dogs and Autism

[Music] here we are episode number 6 of dogs in our world to celebrate the halfway point of this 12 part series I have a phenomenal guest to share with you Temple Grandin is one of the biggest names in the worlds of animal science and autism awareness she recently traveled to Vashon Washington for a weekend of lectures and visits around the island and was kind enough to start her trip with us if you haven't heard of dr. Grandin I recommend the 2010 Emmy award-winning HBO movie titled Temple Grandin and starring Claire Danes in this very special episode of dogs in our world dr. Grandin tells us a bit about herself and offers advice to those of us who have a family member with an autism label she also helps me better understand the autism spectrum dogs and the importance of volunteers in an animal shelter all that and more in this nearly unedited conversation with dr. Temple Grandin you are listening to dogs in our world a show that explores the history science and importance of the domestic dog here's your host Adam Winston and continue to tell me a little bit more about yourself please know I've been at Colorado State University for 26 years on teaching the class and livestock behavior and cattle handling I've done a lot of work with the meat industry to improve a humane treatment of animals I've got some books on animal behavior and animals in translation animals make us human both available on Amazon I have a lot of books on livestock I've got humane livestock handling for large ranches and I've just come out with a new one that's got beautiful photographs be really good 4-h kids on handling cattle pigs sheep and goats it's called Temple Grandin's guide to working with farm animals that just came out and then I've got textbooks and proving animal welfare a practical approach even really into the science so I've got genetics in the bay for domestic animals but that's an expensive textbook anything else that people might know you for I I do a lot of talks on autism because when I was a young child I had all the full-blown symptoms of autism no speech didn't talk until I was age four fortunately I had very good early therapy I can't emphasize enough if you have a young kid who's not talking you've got to start working with them teaching them how to talk teaching him my turn taking these kids have got to learn how to wait and take their turns autism goes from somebody who remains a nonverbal and maybe as trouble dressing themselves all the way up to Thomas Edison and Einstein Einstein didn't talk until age three it's a little big big big continuum you see a little bit of autism you got a socially awkward person who may be just absolutely brilliant in the tech industry too much of that trait and you've got done you know severe handicap and there's a parallel with animals I read a fascinating study that was done over in Europe looking at differences between wolves and dogs and a brain can either be more social-emotional or a few more cognitive and thinking and we've bred the dog to be super social-emotional towards us and in a test that was done in Europe they had wolf watched another wolf open up a puzzle box to get some food and the wolf does it easily but the domestic dog so busy asking us for help and looking for us for help doesn't pay enough attention to open the box I also found another fascinating Journal article on more social animals versus more solitary animals like for example lions are more social than Panthers and again there are parallels here with autism notice our Panthers defective absolutely not you see in the mild forms it's just normal variation of brain to be more thinking or a brain can be more social emotional is it possible that animals could experience autism well if you put an animal in a very deprived environment you can start getting repetitive behavior there resembles some of the repetitive behavior that many autistic kids do and one of the reasons why sometimes autistic kids do repetitive behavior is they do it to shut out an onslaught of sensory over stimulation when I was a little kid we still go on a ferry just like the ferry you got here and when the horn went off at fling my on the deck and started screaming does it hurt my ears today I'm happy to say I was right there in front of the horn all I did was flinch a little bit but when I was a little kid it was like a dentist's drill going into a nerve and so they'll do the repetitive behavior to block out some of these things a dog that you keep locked up in a kennel all the time gets kind of stir-crazy you have a lion that will pace I'm not gonna say that's autism but it's one of my symptoms that you see in in both situations so I work in an animal shelter and in what's the what's the real word for its stereo optic behavior it's called straight to me you know what dogs an animal shoulder need and I have a student former student Christa Coppola her PhD thesis work and we've got it published in the physiology and behavior journal and christa found that dogs that had she played with you know for 45 minutes had lower salivary cortisol compared to the dog just tucked into the kennel so what the animals in an animal shelter need each dog needs a volunteer to come in for 30 45 minutes a day quality play and fun time with a person dogs need people and I've gone into kind of junky animal shelters they're all chain-link fence that had a really good volunteer program and you didn't have all the barking what dogs and kennels that don't get enough contact of people go crazy and are you saying that you see a parallel between some of these repetitive behaviors with with animals that have spent too much time in their enclosure come there's a parallel to the repetitive behaviors that we see in people with autism sometimes well people with autism do it because the sensory environment is over stimulating so they do it to block out and overstimulate the the dog doesn't do the lack of stimulation you see it's like a different cause I see but the behaviors have similarities now when I was a little kid my parents would let me do half an hour an hour a day of some repetitive behavior and that would help calm me down but the problem is if you let the kid do it all the time he's not going to develop and one of the big problems I'm seeing the day with kids labeled autistic maybe ADHD there's a lot of crossover with ADHD getting addicted to video games I'm not suggesting banning videogames but they need to be severely limited to about an hour a day and we've got to get these kids out doing other things I was never allowed to become a recluse in my room I was out doing things before we started recording today we were recording all right well we are recording but before we started recording you were asking me kind of some discovery questions you were how do I know when I'm talking or working with someone who experiences autism well there's a point you might have very mild autism it's just a socially awkward person and there's a point where that's just normal variation when I was out all the time working on the big construction projects with the meat industry I worked with a lot of skilled millwrights and skilled trades people that I know are mildly on the autism spectrum and it's milder forms it's called geeks and nerds it's called Silicon Valley then you get into the more severe forms you can end up with somebody who no matter how much therapy they get cannot dress themselves you see it's a continuum of traits mild forms just part of normal variation now the thing the person needs is kind of socially awkward is they have to be taught social skills like training somebody in a foreign country you can't take anything for granted you have to explain to them that they should be saying please and thank you you have to show them how to shake hands demonstrate the distance that people stand away from each other if they call a colleague stupid you need to pull them aside and explain it that's simply not okay fortunately there were some people that did that with me now a lot of the people in my generation the geeks and nerds ended up going into good careers and one of the reasons for that is social rules were taught in a much more rigid way in the 50s and 60s than they are now and I'm the autistic kids are having a lot more problems with that than the so-called normal kids I want to I want you to teach me and advise me and tell me information that I can share with some of my dog training students and people that I care about who have a family member with autism and I want to I want you to teach me about if having a pet dog can help someone for some kids dogs are the best things I have observed there's three of waise the kids with an autism label react to dogs best buds love them absolutely love them they just understand each other then the second time kind of afraid of the dog at first but then they warm up and then there's a third type where I don't think the dogs appropriate and it's usually sensory they don't like the dog because you never know what's gonna bark you don't like the dogs maybe you smell his smell you see that's a sensory thing and then the dogs not appropriate now other things we need to be teaching kids with autism and a lot of kids it's just responsibility feeding the dog taking care of the dog I'm the life skills and life skills associated with it and the biggest problem I'm seeing with kids with an autism label or some other label I'm when they get to be you know sixth grade or so in high school is they're not learning how to work our generation we had paper routes we need to find substitutes or paper routes start teaching kids in middle school how to work when I was 13 mother set up a sewing job just in the neighborhood and I took apart dresses and hemmed them I saw a farmers market just down the road here perfect thing for an 11 year old a 12 year old to go out there and help with those farmer market booths they need to learn how to do tasks on a schedule outside the home then instant their legal get into the real economy when I was 15 I was cleaning nine horse stalls everyday and basically running a horse barn that teaches the discipline and responsibility of having a job what other advice could you give to a parent who's thinking about getting their child a dog well there's a kid like dogs so you might want to try out the next-door neighbor's Labrador Retriever the other thing I found with many things whether it's kids liking dogs or something you go into for to a career you got to expose the kid or the person to things you don't know what you like or not don't like until you get exposed to it I'd like to see a lot more young people getting as dog training but somebody's got to eat dispose them to it I get asked all the time how I ended up in the beef cattle industry when my mother got remarried when I was 14 that brought a ranch into the family and then I went out on my aunt's ranch and I took guests on trail rides I waited on some tables and did a whole bunch of other things out there I got exposed to the cattle industry that's why I got interested so let's say someone's a child who experiences autism does like dogs and says I want one then he's a kid that is verbal enough to say he wants one you've got your own autism has all these different levels okay you can have a little kid like me that age for looked absolutely horrible and he worked really hard on the little kids some of them get fully verbal others do not so autism sort of goes into three levels the kids get older fully verbal learns to read and write at a normal level maybe genius maybe needs to go to Silicon Valley certainly capable of holding a job then you have a moderate level maybe only partially verbal but there's a lot of jobs they can do and then you have a very severe level where maybe dressing themselves is difficult because you may have epilepsy on top of the autism how could a dog help someone at that level well in those situations the dog sometimes they tether the kid to the dogs to the dog doesn't the kid doesn't run off but let's say you have a fully verbal kid wants to have a dog yeah I get him a dog but I'm also going to teaching the responsibility of taking care of it and feeding it and walking it and playing with it a dog is a responsibility and that would be a perfect done.i time to teach them that maybe they need to go on a dog training class they could we need to get kids interested in doing something other than sitting in their room playing video games because what I'm seeing I'm fully verbal kids there's two paths I'm seeing I'm going to a lot of meetings I'm talking to a lot of parents one kid learns how to work before he graduates from high school goes on to college gets jobs does really well another kid holds up in his room and Rekluse playing video games we've got to work on preventing that from happening and if you've got a kid that's is holed up in his room playing video games we need to work on weaning him off slowly maybe doing something with dogs maybe doing auto mechanics I've been pushing a lot of skilled trades because there's a huge amount of jobs available in the skilled trades that are not going to get replaced in the future by computers have you ever had a dog and if so did it have that having a dog helped you well we had dogs when I was a kid but the animal helped me the most was horses how well rode horses I got them ready for show my whole life have revolved around horses another reason why horses help me is I had friends with a shared interest of horses I was bullied and teased in high school and it's really important to get into activities where there is a shared interest and my friends all liked horses and we like the real horses and we like the plastic model horses and we decorate those could you recommend any other books or sources for parents who are thinking about getting their children with autism a dog can you point them towards anything they should know I have a book called the way I see it which is a lot of little short chapters and it's a chapter and they're about service dogs and I talked about the three ways that kids respond to dogs I've got my animal books on animals in translation and in animals and translation I explained how being a feasible thinker help me understand animals what do you mean by that what do you mean by you're a visual thinker everything I think about is a picture ok like right now I just mentioned a book I saw the cover of it I'm on I'm seeing pictures of dogs coming up in my head I don't think in words it's all pictures I store like snapshots my conversation with dr. Grandin continues in about 45 seconds check out pictures of our visit and leave us a comment at dogs in our world comm you can also let us know what you think of this show by leaving a rating and review on iTunes doing so helps more people find the show coming up in the second half Temple Grandin will continue to talk about how we can help young people and also give us further insight into how some animals and humans think [Music] we'll be right back with more dogs in our world be sure to connect with us on Instagram Facebook Twitter and Pinterest you can also message us directly via the contact page at dog snarl com don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on itunes google play stitcher or soundcloud [Music] support dogs in our world by making a donation this fun and informative show is free to the public but it's not free to produce every dollar donated goes directly towards production expenses hope Adam improve the lives of dogs and people through more episodes just like this one donate today at dogs in our world calm there's a lot of students that are hungry for doing hands-on activities and they find that they really like doing them but they've got to get exposed to it I just read an article in Time magazine just a couple of days ago on community colleges and there was some person from the Urban Institute and he basically said young people today don't know what they want to do and I think he didn't give a reason for it but my reason for it is I don't think they're getting exposed to enough different things to figure out what they want to do then he talked all about this wonderful community college that they had out in the West time where you could study wind turbines and solar panels and irrigation systems and all these interesting things to expose the students to they could turn into careers I love it a friend of this project this podcast and show here Margaret asks she read your book animals and translation and she talked about how you were writing about how both animals and people with autism or people with autism process emotion similar to how animals process emotion do you know what she's well I think most of my interviews I talk about how animals think more than emotions now I do have stuff in my other book animals make us human we're Katherine Johnson and I talked about the Jack pence kappa7 core emotional systems I like fear rage separation distress seeking that's the urged explore then of course you've got sex you've got mother young nurturing and playing and I think a lot of these emotional traits are like a music mixing board recently I read a book about police dogs and then has just read a book just the other day a galley proof it was called half dog will travel they coming out next year it's about a blind person's experience with Guide Dogs and I got to thinking about the kind of dogs described in those two books and the police dog would be a high seat low fear I probably low on the separation distress low on the sort of the affection sort of trait where the Labrador guide dogs gonna be a low seek I don't want to run after balls a low fear don't want it scared of things but really lovey-dovey and affectionate you say he'd set the indicators on the music mixing board differently for the guide dog than you would for a police dog and I think in looking at some of the genomics now that's kind of how genetics works and in animals make us human we discuss on the jack pants kept emotional traits and those are the things that drive behavior the other thing I discussed in detail and animals and translation was that an animal's a sensory based thinker what do you mean by that well when I first started my work with cattle I noticed they'd be barking at a shadow refused to walk over a shadow walk over reflection a code on offense would make him stop and it was obvious to me to be looking at what cattle were seeing but it wasn't obvious to other people but when I first started doing that 70s I thought everybody thought in pictures the way I do I didn't know my thinking was different and then when I did my book thinking in pictures I started asking people about other ways that people think and I found out this kind of a pattern thinker and there's also word thinker not everybody with autism thinks in pictures and I further discussed this in another book I have on the autistic brain where I discuss visual thinking mathematical thinking and word thinking but animals are going to be sensory in animals and translation I discussed the horse that was terrified of black hats because he was abused by a person wearing a black hat and another person wearing a white hat has no effect on them you see it's a visual memory or maybe it's a certain sound is associated with something bad is there anything else that you can share or any other advice you can give to people as they are thinking about how adding a pet dog to the family could help well a lot of these kids need to need responsibilities in chores and you get a pet dog the child needs to learn how to take care of it you know brush it feed it play with it needs to take care of the dog we need to be teaching these kids responsibility one of the things I see especially on the higher end kids where they're fully verbal I see the mom doing too much for the kid talking for the kid I my mother had a very good sense of how to stretch me always getting me do new things but you don't just Chuck a kid into the deep end of the pool you've got to stretch and and I'm because if you don't stretch they don't develop and one of the biggest problems I'm seeing now with the fully verbal kids is not learning how to work I'm see him graduate in college and then just have a horrible time in the workplace because they haven't learned things like get up in the morning and get to work this is stuff that in the 50s I was taught this when I was 7 years old and to be on time and and when I was in high school one of the things that really helped me is the fact that for about three years I basically ran a horse barn I mean I cleaned thousands of horse stalls and I put the horses in and out and I fed them and there's a discipline and a responsibility of doing that and my parents were not that happy at the time that I did very little studying but when I look back on it I was learning how to work and you're out of your comfort zone and and you know that started working the horse barn and went out of my comfort zone then I got to loving doing it and I had friends what you know involved with everything we did with horses we were really into I did English equitation and I was really into getting a horse ready for the show and and I'm so I got friends through activities with horses but I also learned how to work and I didn't realize until just five or six years ago how important all that time I spent cleaning those horse stalls was because I'm seeing too many kids today they can't they're unemployable because they haven't learned work skills and I want to get transition from high school to work done before they graduate now if we have a kid where we have not done that then we got a slowly wean them out of his room we give them choices we give them choices of things to do say okay we'll try a little auto shop or maybe we'll try some other job and you gradually wean them off the videogames [Music] is there anything else you'd like to share with the folks that will be listening to this is anything that I miss think about that an animal is a sensory based thinker you want to understand an animal get away from verbal language another thing about animal mom what do you mean by that how can I get away from verbal he's gonna store pictures in his brain specific sounds I smell sensations I read an article one time but Oliver Sacks about a guy who took some drug and it made him get smell detailed he said when I can imagine what it would be like to be a dog it's a world without words animals are very much into the tone of voice I one time I was at a really nice dinner party and they had a beautiful buffet spread out and their dog jumped up on the buffet table I was the only one who saw it and I just went and he got right back down and slunk away and I made that sharp sound just as he was ready to get a piece of meat right before he got it I that's urgent yeah he understood exactly what I meant by that well and I'm also kind of seeing a parallel to that if you can practice how to communicate being nonverbal then maybe you can also better communicate with those humans that might be nonverbal around us too well there's some nonverbal individuals they can actually learn to type you can have one person there's nonverbal where they've got very severe intellectual challenges but there's other people that are non-verbal where they can learn how to type and it's important to use a tablet and the reason for using a tablet is the print appears next to the keyboard laptops and desktops often don't work because you got to look up to see where they the print is and there's a there's a man named Tito maka Patti Hey and he has a book called how can I talk lips don't move and I he describes a completely sensory jumbled up world how he couldn't control his movements there's another book by a call to read why I jump by an autistic boy and he's coming out with a new book this summons may hold much better describing the jumbled up on a sensory world i you all know what it's like when the TV pixel eights really badly and it can pixelate so badly that the sound goes out to that's the way some people in severan the spectrum experience the sensory world and when they get tired it gets worse this is making me think of a very specific hotel that I went to and I nine o'clock I turned on a TV show and a pixelated a bit was watchable but then as more guests came in and they put more and more load on that network by 10 o'clock it was absolutely useless I couldn't hear any audio at all the picture was completely just all little squares constantly I know some people are saying up here some people with very severe problems that's the kind of problem that they're having now what happened in the TV is the audio went off what I think happens to Lobby audio woodturning don't just a horrible john-boy just overwhelming overwhelming banging on things and noises dr. Grandon it has been an honor and a pleasure to be able to talk with you and I know you've been traveling all day and you've got a big day ahead of you anything else you want to add as we wrap I think we've talked about a lot of good stuff and and I've got a lot of books on autism when you can always search them online just using my name Temple Grandin Amazon's got them all just make sure you search with my name is spell it correctly and your website is Temple Grandin dr. Brennan comm or just go on the Amazon websites put my name and temple brand and all the books will be there it's been a pleasure thank you so much what a and privilege it was to talk with the great temple grandin what a powerful and brilliant human right I would like all of you to think about what dr. Grandin said regarding the importance of volunteers in animal shelters if you're interested in working with animals or maybe you're a student looking for a way to gain some volunteer credit I recommend researching any local animal shelters in your community and see if they have a volunteer team you can join again I also recommend watching the 2010 HBO biopic of Temple Grandin starring Claire Danes and Julia Ormonde Emily Garson Saenz and Mick Jackson the director and Christopher monger the writer they did a fantastic job putting that project together I recently re-watched the film on iTunes and it's still one of my favorite movies it should also be available on Amazon Prime and the HBO apps don't forget to let us know what you think of today's show at dogs in our worldcom or leave us a rating and comment and iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts I will talk to you soon [Music] you

Channel: Dogs in Our World

Views: 22,545

Keywords: temple grandin, dogs, autism, dogs in our world, dog podcast, animal behavior

Id: 24o2AprAjrM

Length: 28min 41sec (1721 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 30 2018