Aurora – Four-year-old Lucas Carlson is taking unsteady steps on the ceramic tile at Aurora Mall when his arms freeze at his side and he falls forward.
The Denver boy in the blue “Thomas the Tank Engine” shirt has cerebral palsy, which affects his balance, strength and coordination. He is making the transition from a walker to crutches, and trips often.
On this trip, Lucas’ mother, Michelle Carlson, walks by his side, and so does the boy’s new partner: Balto, a 3-year-old greyhound who not long ago could be seen on the tracks, whipping around the rail with other purebreds in fast pursuit of a mechanical lure.
Balto is now retired and has been retrained to be a service dog with a mission to help a 4-year-old boy walk.
Lucas quietly cries and reaches for his mother’s pant leg to help pull himself up. But Michelle moves the boy’s hand to the harness strapped around Balto’s midsection.
“If you need support, you use Balto, remember?” she says.
The Carlsons found Balto through Bighorn Assistance Dogs, an Aurora nonprofit run by Minette Topham, who adopts adult dogs from shelters and rescue organizations and trains them to assist adults and children with disabilities.
Topham started Bighorn in 2003, operating at home. She has been training service dogs for eight years, teaching canines to lie on the floor next to a person having a seizure, flip light switches, retrieve objects and pull wheelchairs.
Topham has placed three dogs, providing them for free, promising lifelong follow-ups.
The need for service dogs far exceeds the number of trained canines, said Jorjan Powers, spokeswoman for the Assistance Dog Institute in Santa Rosa, Calif. The wait is typically three to five years.
Her institute and many like it breed golden retrievers, Labradors, Belgian Malinois and German shepherds for this work. But Bighorn gets its dogs from shelters and rescue groups.
Topham looks for healthy dogs with good dispositions who aren’t distracted by squirrels. She uses positive reinforcement to teach them.
“There are a lot of great dogs in the shelters,” says Topham, who works as a part-time veterinarian technician. But training dogs and joining them with people in need is what she loves.
“This is what makes my life worth living,” she says. “We just want to save dogs … and to assist people.”
Michelle Carlson was scouring the Internet to find ways to help her son walk when she heard about Bighorn. Most resources provide dogs for youths 11 years and older.
But she felt Lucas needed the dog now to give him something to grab onto and protection from being jostled as he walks.
There is another plus.
“Instead of Lucas being the kid with the cane and walker, he’ll be the kid with the dog,” she says. “I’ve already noticed people coming up and talking to Lucas about his dog, not his disability.”
Sure enough, as Lucas pulls on Balto’s harness to rise, a girl about his age approaches.
“Hey, doggy,” she says, pointing at Balto. “Mommy, look at the dog.”
Staff writer Jeremy Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
