![\"IMG_1173](\"https:\/\/communipartner.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/IMG_1173-trimmed-228x300.jpg\")
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Justin is a 7 year old boy who was born with a syndrome that has a very large tongue and a cleft palate called Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome.\u00a0 Justin\u2019s tongue was so large that it impacted his ability to breath, swallow and eat.\u00a0 It was surgically \u2018reduced\u2019 by a long-time friend and colleague of Dr. D’Antonio’s, Dr. Jeff Marsh in St Louis who has extensive experience with this procedure.<\/p>\n
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Even after surgery, Justin continued to have a severe speech impairment.\u00a0 The next clinical question for Justin was whether a surgery for his cleft palate would make it easier for him to speak.\u00a0 Dr. Marsh arranged for Dr. D\u2019Antonio to evaluate Justin and work with him to determine if more surgery was indicated and to assist Justin in improving his speech.<\/p>\n
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When Dr. D\u2019Antonio first met Justin, he did not move his mouth or tongue for\u00a0vowels or consonant\u00a0sounds.\u00a0 It was a big job to get Justin motivated to move his tongue and lips to make speech sounds and to want to communicate orally. \u00a0Enter Kanzu the speech therapy assistant.\u00a0 Kanzu is a Rhodesian Ridgeback Dog owned by Dr. D\u2019Antonio.\u00a0 He is a registered therapy dog.\u00a0 Justin met Kanzu who demonstrated for Justin how to ‘speak’\u00a0 and soon repeat visits became the motivator and reinforcer for Justin’s\u00a0speech therapy drills.<\/p>\n
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Rhodesian Ridgebacks are fairly large dogs.\u00a0 Kanzu measures 28 inches at the shoulders and weighs almost\u00a0100 pounds.\u00a0 When Justin met Kanzu, his first impulse was to try to climb right on him to ride him.\u00a0 Kanzu was a very patient assistant and allowed lots of hugging and snuggling and even a quick mount.\u00a0 When we shared the photo of Justin and Kanzu with Dr. Marsh, he\u00a0commented; \u201cI love Justin’s enthusiasm and Kanzu’s tolerance\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Kanzu is a fantastic speech therapy assistant and seems to love the attention.\u00a0 And best yet, Justin is improving rapidly and speaking more.\u00a0 He especially loves to watch videos of Kanzu doing agility and calls out commands to Kanzu as he watches along with the run\u2026..he gets great speech practice as Justin tells Kanzu:\u00a0 \u201cover\u201d,\u201d table\u201d, \u00a0\u201cjump\u201d, \u201cclimb it\u201d, \u00a0\u201ctire\u201d, \u00a0\u201ctunnel\u201d!\u00a0 And, when Kanzu\u2019s son Kuyu entered the picture as a therapy-dog-in-training, Justin gained increased motivation to produce the \u2018K\u2019 sound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Justin is a 7 year old boy who was born with a syndrome that has a very large tongue and a cleft palate called Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome.\u00a0 Justin\u2019s tongue was so large that it impacted his ability to breath, swallow and eat.\u00a0 It was surgically \u2018reduced\u2019 by a long-time friend and colleague of Dr. D’Antonio’s, Dr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1785,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1793","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communipartner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communipartner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communipartner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communipartner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communipartner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1793"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/communipartner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1870,"href":"https:\/\/communipartner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1793\/revisions\/1870"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communipartner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communipartner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}