Clean Run - January 2013 - 54

By Jen Pinder, photos by Joan Malak It’s always a great feeling when you see your sport give back to the community. Whether it is a baseball charity event or a race to raise money for cancer, it always gives me a great feeling. Several months ago I was at an agility trial and saw an old friend, Kim Holmes, who I have known for many years from trailing and training. Years ago, I used to travel to shows on a weekly basis, but now I teach on many weekends and don’t travel as far to show at trials. As a result, I hadn’t seen much of her in a couple years. In between runs, I asked what she had been up to lately. She then began to tell me about a fabulous organization that she founded, Agility Angels. Agility Angels uses the sport of dog agility to help children and teens diagnosed with Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome develop social skills and self-conﬁdence. They are a 100% volunteer organization made up of certiﬁed therapy dogs and their owners. I asked Kim if I could interview her for an article about the organization. Here is what I found out. Jen: What is Agility Angels? Kim: Agility Angels is a nonproﬁt organization (5013C) that works with trained agility therapy dogs and autistic teens and adults. We take trained agility dogs and teach the kids how to run them. They work with the same dog each week and
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Agility Angels
Agility Gives Back
the same coach or coaches. Some of the kids, depending on their level of function may have two coaches and we’ve even had some that need three coaches. Jen: You say that they are trained therapy agility dogs. Is there any special training that they get? Kim: For insurance purposes, we go by Therapy Dogs International’s requirements for a therapy dog. We have since added a few requirements of our own depending on our student’s needs. For example, the dogs have to be able to lie quietly since we can’t have any barking dogs. Some of our kids are reactive to sounds and wear earplugs or earphones. We have actually had kids crawl under the mats in the building in response to sound. Jen: What or who inspired you to create this organization? Kim: In 2006, I lost my husband and was rethinking working with dogs in agility. I had lost my desire and interest in training dogs. In April of 2008, my friend Melissa Voetsch, who has an autistic son, called and told me about a story she saw on CBS about an autistic boy who was training his own agility dog. In the process of training his dog, he actually stopped having meltdowns. In June of 2008 we had our

ﬁrst class in my backyard with eight kids and eight dogs and probably about sixteen coaches. Initially I was sick to my stomach with nerves. I knew how to train dogs, but I knew limited things about autism and now I had autistic kids in my backyard. My primary focus was that I do no harm. There was one boy who on the ﬁrst night would not come into the backyard because he was terriﬁed of dogs. He stayed out of the yard and watched for the ﬁrst three weeks. In the end, it was the activity that drew him in. If we just had the dogs it wouldn’t have been enough of a draw for him to come and join. But the colorful obstacles, the dogs doing tricks, and the other kids having a great time was just too much of a draw. His desire to be involved allowed him to overcome the fear of dogs and join in. Jen: In the beginning where did you ﬁnd your coaches? Kim: Initially our coaches were all dog trainers. We do background checks on our coaches. They are experienced dog trainers and as such deal with behavior every day with their dogs. Behavior is behavior regardless of the species. So positive reinforcement to the dogs or student is basically the same thing. Initially, we ﬂew by the seat of our pants and there was a lot of on the job training.
Clean Run | January 13

Clean Run - January 2013

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