Mother cries seeing her autistic son bond with service dog

[A mother breaks down in tears as she watches her autistic son enjoy a rare moment of affection with his new service dog. Love What Matters/Facebook]

For one mother of a child with autism, the arrival of her son’s new service dog brought profound joy and relief.

The Love What Matters podcast reported on the family’s story, which has gone viral thanks to a touching photo that has received more than 200,000 shares online. In a post published on Oct. 18 on the show’s Facebook page, the mother in question can be seen crying with her hand to her face as her son leans casually against the sleeping dog named Tornado.

The mother, identified as S. Niehaus, described what it means to see her son so at ease with the dog:

“See this moment? I’ve never experienced a moment like this…This picture captures the face of a mother who saw her child, who she can’t hug, wash, dress, snuggle and touch freely lay on his new Service dog of his own free will, with a purposeful, unspoken attachment … She has sat with her son while he has cried at night for months … And now she is sitting behind her son silently watching this moment, with the air sucked from her lungs, and no words to say,” she wrote.

“It is a feeling that is indescribable.”

Tornado isn’t the only service dog to have such a positive impact on the life of a child with autism. Niehaus’ Facebook post has received thousands of responses, including comments from dozens of parents sharing their own stories of how a service animal transformed their autistic child.

The most popular comment, which had more than 75,000 likes, came from a former service dog trainer name Rita Pauline. She wrote:

“I used to train service dogs for children with Autism. People always ask “how can you just give up a dog you spent almost 2yrs excessively training?”… This. This is how!”