Family tries to raise funds to train service dog for autistic son

It’s 8:15 p.m. and 7-year-old Tyler Grieb is nowhere near ready for bed.

In his child-sized Abbey Road shirt, he runs in circles from the living room to the kitchen. His feet pound the floor in perfect timing to the classical music playing from the stereo.

Tyler’s parents, Emily and Scott Grieb, are both professional musicians. They passed their love of music to their son, who throws tantrums whenever they try to turn it off.

“His musical memory is crazy,” Emily said. “He has perfect pitch — it’s better than mine. He’s really a sound-oriented kid. That’s how we structure things and how we reward him.”

The people Tyler interacts most with are musicians: classical composers, The Beatles, James Taylor and Taylor Swift.

Because Tyler has autism and agenesis of the corpus callosum, meaning the two
hemispheres of his brain aren’t connected, communicating with the outside world is difficult.

Tyler was diagnosed with ACC at 14 months and with autism one year later.
When Emily and Scott noticed Tyler wasn’t learning to talk and would throw substantial tantrums about small things, they talked to Tyler’s ACC therapists. The therapists delivered bad news: Tyler’s symptoms indicated he had autism.

Emily and Scott said they were devastated by Tyler’s diagnosis.

“It pretty much looks like the end of the world,” Emily said.

The State of Indiana, IU resources and the community offered hope and help to Emily, Scott and Tyler.

“When you get that label, you get informed help quickly,” Emily said. “We have a fair amount of gratitude because we got an early start.”

In order to improve his autism, Tyler had to continue his extensive therapy for his ACC before they could move on to more autism therapies.

“To stand, we had to physically move him where most kids would just experiment,” Emily said.

But Tyler’s interactive abilities could change if his family is able to raise enough money to afford a multipurpose dog.

4 Paws for Ability is an Ohio nonprofit organization that trains dogs to match the needs of each disabled child. Emily and Scott discovered the organization while doing online autism research and decided to give the organization a try.

The dogs are provided for free, but the agency asks each family to raise $13,000. Emily and Scott have managed to raise $9,500 so far.

They said they’re hoping one more fundraiser on Feb. 20 at Harmony School can put them over the edge and allow them to start paying to train a multipurpose puppy to assist Tyler.

The puppy will be able to keep track of Tyler and help Tyler stop inappropriate social behaviors, such as frantic hand waving, screaming or singing Beatles songs in public.

“You can be out in public, and he decides to sing ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ really loudly,” Emily said. “We can’t have ‘Helter Skelter’ coming out in public.”

The dog’s companionship is the most appealing aspect for Scott and Emily.

“It’s non-judgmental companionship 24 hours a day,” Scott said. “They don’t mind repeating things. A dog will play catch for hours.”

To outward observers, Tyler’s a lonely kid. He had his birthday Sunday but didn’t do much celebrating due to his autism.

“There’s absolutely no point in having a birthday party,” Emily said. “There are no friends to invite even though many kids like Tyler and are interested in him.”

She said Tyler is more comfortable in group settings, but social interactions can still be difficult.

Scott and Emily said they hope the dog will be able to change some of Tyler’s social isolation.

“Kids who have a dog will become more verbal,” Scott said. “It can help him socially connect.”

Because Emily and Scott know that Tyler’s ACC causes his autism, Tyler doesn’t take any medicines or follow special diets. Instead he sees a speech therapist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, does adaptive swim and dance classes at the Bloomington YMCA and participates in therapeutic horseback riding.

“Tyler’s been in daily therapy every day since he was 16 months old,” Emily said. “This is just his routine.”

Scott and Emily said Tyler enjoys his myriad of therapy activities, especially horseback riding. They’re optimistic about Tyler interacting well with the dog because of his experience with horses.

As Emily looks at her son, who just finished jumping to the music, she remarks just how far Tyler’s come with his therapy.

“There was a long time where we didn’t know if he would be able to jump,” she said.

It’s now 9 p.m., and Tyler is sitting on the couch, worn out from his 45 minutes of jumping and running. He doesn’t have any more energy to run, but his feet won’t stop tapping to the beat. At the finale, he gets his hands into the act, adding a perfectly on-beat drum roll. 

“He loves anything that’s catchy and straightforward,” Scott said.

The Beatles are one of Tyler’s favorites, but Emily and Scott said they hope the dog will be able to help curtail some of the band’s inappropriate lyrics. They said they are optimistic about what this dog can do for Tyler.

“We do know people who’ve done this and seen an end result,” Scott said.