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GROTON, Conn. - When her son Kyle was born, Sharlene Tupas noticed he wouldn't study her face, the way most babies do.
Instead, he would almost look through her, or around her. As he got older he babbled, but at his two-year checkup, he still wasn't talking.
She thought boys simply start talking later, but the doctor told her and her husband, Randy, not necessarily.
By the time she was pregnant with a second child, Kyle was diagnosed as autistic. His brother Austin would follow the same path.
After seven years of struggling with the boys' development _ and several years of splitting up the family so the children could live where the best treatment was available _ the Groton family is putting faith in a dog named Maggie.
Maggie, a mix of a Labrador retriever and poodle called a labradoodle, is being trained as a nontraditional type of service dog. Kyle, 7, has trouble speaking clearly.
He is on par academically and loves to play, but other children can be hesitant to play with him. Austin, 6, makes one-word requests, like "eat" or "drink" and mostly lives in his own little world, his mother said.
Unlike an assistance dog for the blind, dogs trained to work with autistic children serve as a bridge between the children and the world around them, said Patty Dobbs of the Storrs-based North Star Foundation.
