Service dog helps boy gain dignity, freedom

WASILLA — Touring the Dorothy Page Museum and Historic Town Site last week, Willie Koonce was just another young face in the crowd.

Along with about 30 of his classmates from Meadow Lakes Elementary School, Koonce learned about early Wasilla history, from the area’s first settlement in 1917 to how children nearly a century ago attended school.

That Willie was just another face in the crowd was a monumental moment for the 9-year-old Meadow Lakes boy. Affected by autism and Down syndrome, Willie is fed through a tube and can’t verbally communicate with other children or his teachers, said mom Carmi Koonce. That means that until last week’s outing to the local history museum, Willie usually had to sit out field trips.

The difference now is Willie’s new best friend, Cookie, a 14-month-old trained yellow Labrador retriever service dog. The Koonce family recently returned from a trip to the Lower 48 to pick up Cookie and receive intense training with the dog. Cookie’s homecoming culminates a yearlong fundraising effort to pay the nearly $25,000 cost to purchase the dog and travel to the Lower 48 for training.

The result?

“They are awesome together,” Carmi said. “You’ll see them in action (at the field trip). Willie, he interacts rough with people. He feels things differently than many people do and he needs intensity. You’ll see him patting Cookie really hard or laying on him and stuff. Cookie is trained to love it, and he totally gets it.”

Besides looking out for Willie and being trained to sense when the child is near an emotional meltdown, when out and about, Willie is tethered to the dog. Without some connection to keep him grounded, Willie will run off at any time, Carmi said, “and he has no sense of danger.”

In the nearly three weeks since the family returned with Cookie, they have had no unplanned incidents, Carmi said.

“Right now, he does get tethered to Cookie whenever we go anywhere,” she said. “At school before, I usually didn’t let him go on field trips.”

Last Friday, the dog and Carmi were waiting for Willie and his classmates to arrive at the museum. As they piled off the bus, several spotted Cookie — named for Cookie Monster, one of Willie’s favorite Muppets — and wanted to play with him.

“Can I play with Cookie?” one girl asks.

“Not right now,” Carmi patiently answers. “He’s working, but thank you so much for asking.”

“How about if I just hold his collar?” she persists.

“I’m sorry, but Cookies has to work right now,” Carmi answers.

“Can I at least pet him?” the girl continues.

That other children see Cookie as a playmate is something the family has to deal with, Carmi said. She also addressed an issue that came up after Frontiersman readers first learned about Willie in March 2011. Some readers left comments online questioning the practice of tethering children.

While Carmi said she shares those concerns about tethering children, those with special needs sometimes require special solutions.

“The reason we tether him is because it gives Willie freedom,” she said. “It gives him dignity. To somebody who has never been in a responsible position with a child who has no sense of danger, it might look (like the opposite). But the reality is he has no sense of danger. He cannot go anywhere without holding an adult’s hand. At 9 years old, he doesn’t like it, but he’ll accept it. But in a couple of years, then when he’s a teenager, what then? By then, he and Cookie will have a relationship of working together.”

That relationship is building quickly. At the field trip, the dog patiently lays on the ground until getting the signal from mom it’s time to move with Willie. Cookie waits patiently while Willie navigates stairs without pulling or tugging at him. When the group is seated listening to a lecture from museum curator Bethany Buckingham, Cookie lays in a tight yellow ball.

Because it’s so close to the end of the school year, Cookie isn’t accompanying Willie in class, but he will next school year, Carmi said before stopping to make an observation.

“I was just noticing how low-stressed today has been,” she said.

How would the field trip be different without Cookie?

“Are you into running?” Carmi joked. “I can unhook him for 10 minutes and we can see what happens. Honestly, he would be darting here, darting there, into everything. I would spend the field trip chasing him or I would spend it making him hold my hand, which he fights against.”

While Cookie is trained to look out for Willie and alert an adult if he’s having difficulty, the adolescent Labrador is still very much “all dog,” Carmi said. When he’s not wearing his harness, he’s allowed to just be a dog.

“The harness means he’s at work,” she said, glancing down at a bored-looking Cookie. “The only reason he’s pretending to be bored and low-key is because he’s working. What he really wants to do is chase all these kids, lick everybody and play with them.”

Contact reporter Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.