Brave Dog Saves Owner With Asperger’s Syndrome

A Tempe woman recorded a video of her dog interrupting her violent Asperger’s meltdown and posted it online. Arizona resident Danielle Jacobs, was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome in 2013. She trained her 4-year-old Rottweiler Samson to stop her from self-harming, and he’s subsequently passed his CGC, CGCA, and PAT. Jacobs posted the video to raise awareness about her disorder.

“This is what having aspergers is like,” Jacobs writes on YouTube. “This is what’s considered a meltdown…I trained him to alert to depressive episodes and self harm not both but he alerted.” Elsewhere she recounts an analogy, “people with Asperger’s or autism are like a computer. There’s too much input not enough output – [you] lose power and crash.”

Asperger’s is an autism spectrum disorder according to the DSM-5. Sanson was adopted from the HALO animal rescue in Phoenix.