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Lisa Swiger was teaching her 6-year-old son, Jack, how to get some love from his new dog, Caylie.
"Say 'kiss'," she told Jack.
"Kiss," Jack told the golden retriever sitting next to him.
Caylie gave him such a quick, assertive one it left the startled boy wiping dog drool off his cheek.
The two are getting to know each other. And for Jack, the stakes are high.
As an infant, he lost the use of nearly half of his brain when he was shaken by a babysitter. He's struggling to walk, and still battles persistent seizures.
Caylie, a frisky 18-month-old, is his key to a better life. She's been training much of her life under the auspices of paws 4 people, a charity that uses prison inmates to help train assistance dogs for the disabled.
She's about to move into the Swigers' home near Harrisburg, and the family hopes it'll start a new chapter for Jack. Caylie's trainer from the agency, Karen Owens, says the dog can obey as many as 100 commands.
One problem: Caylie's used to getting them from Owens and other experts.
So, there's still work to do as they teach her how to fit in with her new family. At one point, Lisa told her to sit just as her husband Eliot told her to stand. Caylie looked from one to the other as if to say, could you make up your minds, please?
"They're teaching us, too, as you can tell," Eliot said.
'They didn't think he'd live'
The Swigers were licensed foster parents when they met Jack in early 2005. He was just under 2, lying in a rehab center.
His body bore the classic signs of shaken baby syndrome. His brain was swollen. He had hemorrhaging in both eyes. Strokes left him unable to walk or talk. Doctors had to remove part of his skull temporarily to accommodate the swollen brain tissue.
"They didn't think he would live," Lisa said. "And when he did, they thought he'd need to be in a nursing home."
A babysitter eventually pleaded guilty to felony child abuse.
The Swigers adopted him in November 2006. He has made progress, helped by his doting parents and two new big brothers, Jacob and Kristopher. Today, Jack can walk with help from a cane or his parents' hands, though he prefers scooting along the floor. He's a first-grader at Harrisburg Elementary, where he's pulled out of his regular class several hours a day for specialized instruction.
He talks as fluently as any 6-year-old, and his bubbly personality makes him a non-stop people magnet.
When a reporter stopped by to interview his parents, he scooted over with a request of his own.
"Tickle me," he asked.
When his brothers introduced him to their girlfriends, he asked if they'd be his girlfriends.
When his pants slipped down due to all the scooting, Lisa playfully scolded him about showing off too much of himself.
"Shake my booty!" Jack giggled as brother Jacob hiked his pants back up.
He still struggles with seizures, though. They come three to five times a day, sometimes so violently that they jerk one arm upward while the other flails in search of someone to hold him. They've interfered with school, making it hard for Jack to concentrate, and they've made walking so dangerous that he has to wear a helmet.
The answer to that problem revealed itself shortly after the Swigers met Jack, when he spotted a fluffy white service dog named Ditto during his stay in the rehab center.
Jack reached out, and said his first word:
"Dog."
Seizures, then a special bond
Early this year, the family traveled to a federal prison camp near Morganton, W. Va., where inmates work with paws 4 people to help train service dogs.
They'd come to find a dog for Jack. But the strain of traveling made it a bad day. The seizures kept coming, more than two dozen. But the family had come too far not to go through with the process.
The folks from paws 4 people said they needed to see one of the dogs take a special liking to Jack - a "bump," they called it. That way they'd know there'd be a natural bond to build on.
The dogs were friendly, but none showed any special interest in Jack. Then Caylie stopped by.
Before she left, Jack froze. Another seizure.
"She seemed very sensitive to it," Eliot recalled. "She just sat there and waited for him. When he came back, she put her head in his lap."
A definite bump, the trainers said.
A steady partner as he grows
Caylie's been visiting the Swigers off-and-on for months now. She'll move in permanently within weeks, joining the family's other two dogs, Maggie, a Corgi-Sheltie mix, and Moe, a golden retriever-lab mix.
Jack and Caylie are bonding nicely, everyone agrees. Summoned to come sit by Jack, Caylie trotted over, sat down facing him and placed a protective paw on the boy's foot.
I'm here, she seemed to be saying.
"Awww..." Lisa said.
Eventually, Jack will be able to stand and walk, using Caylie's harness to steady himself. She'll even be able to help him up the stairs. The Swigers hope she'll be able to tell when he's having seizures - a skill some service dogs develop.
The family's doctor says Jack might need brain surgery to deal with the seizures. It could mean days of confinement to a hospital bed. Caylie could help; she's trained to lay quietly with him.
Jack will need her help for other challenges, too.
'There's a purpose to his life'
"The whole idea (behind getting Caylie) is for him to become as independent as possible," Eliot said. "We want him to go to college, have a job, get married. With all the progress he's made, we don't want to go backward."
Added Lisa: "There's a purpose to his life, otherwise he wouldn't have survived and had such a big old personality. He seems to touch everyone he meets."
As a reporter and photographer prepared to leave, Jack asked, "Can I walk you out?"
Someday soon, hopefully - with Caylie's help.
