Last year, Melissa Clode was tossing up whether to get a new dog for her family.
She knew taking on a puppy was a big commitment, and could lead to a lot of extra work.
And her family already has a lot on its plate — her seven-year-old son Charlie suffers from myriad health problems, including a heart condition, an intellectual disability and autism.
Charlie suffers regularly from seizures and has spent much of his short life at the Canberra Hospital.
Her goal was to get an assistance dog for Charlie, but she was worried it wouldn't work out.
In the end, she found Elton, and their lives changed.
Healing the trauma of constant hospital care
For his entire life, Charlie has required constant medical care.
"He was born without the right connection between his heart and lungs, and with a significant heart condition and a genetic condition," Ms Clode said.
"He's had over 120 hospital admissions, seven heart surgeries, and those heart surgeries resulted in a couple of strokes, where he lost 20 per cent of his brain."
Charlie was left with acquired brain damage and, in addition to seizures, sometimes stops breathing and requires resuscitation.
She said being in the hospital could be "traumatic" for Charlie and the family, but was an unavoidable reality.
So Ms Clode and her family decided an assistance dog might be beneficial to assist them in caring for Charlie.
At first, Elton posed a challenge as a new puppy, but quickly adapted to life with the family.
Ms Clode said the gamble paid off, and Elton changed Charlie's life in numerous ways.
A change in conversation
Along with medical equipment that monitors Charlie's oxygen levels, Elton is able to sense when a seizure might be coming on, and alert the family.
"He's alerted us to most of Charlie's seizures by barking," Ms Clode said.
But the dog provides additional benefits that the family were not prepared for.
"His main job is actually after Charlie's seizures," Ms Clode said.
"So when Charlie's in a stage called the postictal period, Elton will basically do what I guess a parent would do and hop on top of Charlie and give him a big kind of hug — a deep pressure hug around the lower half of his body to make Charlie feel safe — because Charlie seems to feel like he's falling in that phase."
But she said a further surprising benefit of having Elton in their lives was that having a dog around changed the subject from Charlie's health problems and whatever treatment he was going through.
"The first thing I noticed was when we're having one of Charlie's hospital admissions, the way in which everybody approaches Charlie, even just coming into his room," she said.
"He's a very sick little boy, and there'll be a lot of stuff that's going on around him, but if he's got his dog on his bed, people will talk about his dog and his life.
"People will say, 'what's your dog's name?' ... and he'll usually say, 'his name's Elton, he's my chocolate brown dog'.
"And you know, he's very proud and very excited about having that conversation."
And now Charlie can be even prouder of his dog, with Elton recently taking out the People's Choice category in the 2023 Australian Dog of the Year awards.
Ms Clode said she wanted to encourage others to consider an assistance dog, after the success of Elton.
Demand for assistance dogs is high, and typically the dogs are sent to live with a foster family while they are trained for the first two years.
Ms Clode chose to avoid these hurdles and not to use an organisation.
Instead, she adopted Elton from a breeder and hired an external trainer while picking up some of his training herself.
"I probably work with Elton about an hour each day, to make sure that he's got enough reinforcement of what he's learning," she said.
"And we've got a really wonderful trainer in Canberra, who is such a significant resource to so many people with dogs, and we're very lucky to have found her."
But she said all the effort was worth it.
"It's definitely a process that I would recommend, I would love to see every single long-term medically compromised child in Canberra have a dog on the end of the bed," she said.
