By Michael Freeman, Managing Editor
When ACU business students turn to page 315 in their Organizational Behavior textbooks, they may recognize someone. That someone teaches students about the concepts of learning and conditioning, works with a young boy who has a rare disability and always wears a dull gold coat of fur.
Hali, a yellow Labrador retriever, belongs to Drs. Mark and Laura Phillips, assistant professors of management sciences, and is featured in the introduction of the chapter “Decision Making by Individuals and Groups.” And for the Phillips family, the decision to get Hali was one that not only affected the lives of ACU faculty and students, but of their family, especially the Phillips’ 12-year-old son, Matthew.
Matthew has osteogenesis imperfecta, commonly known as brittle bone disease, a genetic disorder that causes bones to break easily because of the body’s deficiency of collagen. Because of his disorder, Matthew is confined to a wheelchair, but to him, his disorder should not be a debilitating handicap. In fact, he advanced to the preliminary round of the 2007 Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee.
“Matt has a physical disability, but mentally, he’s 100 percent,” Mark said. “So our big goal with him has always been to try to help him be as independent as possible. But there are just times when he needs something, needs help.”
Enter Hali. Hali is a service dog, a dog specifically trained to help people who have disabilities. She was trained at the Canine Companions for Independence (CCI) training center in Santa Clara, Calif., where she learned to perform tasks such as turning on and off light switches, placing laundry in the clothes hamper and taking written messages to and from different people in the house.
“It’s almost hard to imagine the number of things they can train the dogs to do,” Mark said.
Knowing more than 30 commands, Hali can help Matthew in a variety of ways, but she does so in her own mellow, sluggish manner. Her trainers jokingly nicknamed her “Flash” because of her slow responses. But Hali’s placid personality was just what the Phillips needed for their fragile son.
“She’s perfect for Matt because she’s not hyperactive and not dangerous,” Mark said. “She’s very calm. She’s not at all aggressive.”
Not only did Hali’s personality fit the Phillips’ needs, so did her price. Some service dog agencies offer dogs for as much as $10,000. But other agencies give dogs away for free. CCI is the latter.
Founded in 1975, CCI is the largest non-profit provider of assistance dogs in the nation, which primarily provides Labradors and golden retrievers. Volunteer puppy raisers train the dogs during their first fifteen months of life, and then the puppies are handed over to one of CCI’s training centers for six months of specialized training.
The Phillips first learned of service dogs a couple of years before they got Hali in 2003.
“We applied at several different organizations, and CCI was the first one we made it onto the waiting list for,” Laura said.
After they were notified they had made the top of the waiting list, Laura and Matthew traveled to Santa Clara for an interview. CCI selected Hali for them, and the trio began a two-week training course that included classroom work and field trips to stores and restaurants. When the training course had finished, Hali became part of the Phillips family.
“For the first part of the time that we had her, she was primarily a service dog,” Mark said. “I think now she’s almost more of a pet than she was, in part because Matt can do much more for himself now.”
Matthew, now in the seventh grade at Wylie Junior High School, is responsible for playing with, brushing and feeding Hali. In return, Hali is responsible for helping him at home and when he leaves the house. She turns lights on and off, picks up objects he drops and transports messages he writes to Mark and Laura.
“She goes to all kinds of places,” Laura said. “She goes to a lot of ACU activities with the family. We had her at [an ACU football game], and the guy at the gate was concerned she might bite someone. She’s a pretty mellow dog, but sometimes you get funny comments.”
The strangest incident the Phillips have experienced with Hali came at an aerospace museum in New Mexico when a worker ordered Hali out of the museum because the museum’s rule stated that only dogs that could be carried were allowed. So, Mark picked the 50-pound dog up and proceeded to enter the museum. After three or four minutes of carrying Hali around, Mark was able to put her down after the museum’s curator said it was OK for Hali to be in the museum.
Aside from the occasional incident with a business owner not understanding her role as a service dog, Hali leads a fairly uneventful life. During weekdays, she spends most of her time in the Mabee Business Building.
“She doesn’t go to the junior high because that would be a disaster,” Mark said. “A dog running around the junior high school – that’s why she’s up here all day, while [Matthew] is at school.”
While in either Mark or Laura’s office, Hali usually lies curled up on a dingy towel in the corner of the room. She wears a blue vest strapped around her midsection, with the words “Canine Companions for Independence” printed in white letters on both sides of the vest, and quietly rests every afternoon until Matthew gets out of school for the day. Because she is so docile, some students still do not know she resides on the second floor of the Mabee Business Building; however, the faculty knows.
“I think the faculty members just kind of consider her a fixture,” Laura said. “They all know she’s here.”
The students who do know of Hali enjoy playing with her. Occasionally, students will take her outside to play ball, toss a Frisbee around and let her chase squirrels (her favorite pastime). The Phillips also take her to the department’s senior blessings.
“The students love her,” Mark said. “They love to take her out and play Frisbee with her.”
Students also get a chance to see Hali in the classroom. Mark and Laura sometimes will use her as a demonstration in one of their six classes they teach each semester. One lecture topic Hali is often used to express is learning and conditioning.
“She’s a great example of how that can work,” Mark said. “I’ve done it more than once when we talk about that topic.”
After seven years of life, Hali’s impact on ACU students, faculty and her family has reached far beyond the roles of teacher and service dog. She is best known as a friend. A friend that has four legs and a tail; a friend that has deep, sad eyes and a cold, wet nose; a friend that has a blue-green tattoo of the number “01128” stamped on the inside of her right ear, which can be used to identify her if she is ever lost from home. But as far as the Phillips family and ACU students are concerned, they don’t intend on losing their friend anytime soon.
