Hearing Ear Dogs
February 2006
February is the month for love around the world.
This month is for Kim who wrote me from New York City asking me about hearing
ear dogs.
Officially Trained Hearing Ear Dog
An officially trained hearing ear dog is fostered by one family for a year,
then goes to dog school to learn how to do things. Leaving a fostering home is
terribly difficult for a dog and probably the fostering family is unhappy too.
Most dogs never give up hope that they will have a special person in their lives
again, but they have a practical realism too which is the current home and
family. So it is possible for a dog to go through this training and bond with
the disabled person. There are specialist dogs for many different type of
disabilities http://www.4pawsforability.org/autismdogs.htm
Ontario Disability does not consider my dog to be a hearing ear dog because I
trained her myself. So I cannot get a hearing ear dog allowance for her. When a
dog comes from a proper dogs for the disabled school, you can get an
allowance of $70 a month to help with the cost of a dog. When Aslana entered my
life, I was still able to buy her myself, and train her to be my ears.
Veterinary costs have skyrocketed over my life. I have Aslana in a well dog
program at a vet, which pays for an examination and shots, and gives a 15%
discount on future vet needs during the year. Because I have HD, I cannot cut
her nails, so she goes to the vets for a nail trim once a month. I live in
terror that she will get sick because I cannot afford to take her to the vets.
Because we are on Disability, our only option is to have the dog put to sleep if
her vet costs become demanding.
However that is only the money end, and I guess I would beg on the streets if
my dog needed vet care.
Feeding the Dog which helps you
When Aslana was a puppy she showed great interest in green growing things in
her food bowl. Meschlen mixture was her utter favorite, along with Kraft
cheese slices. Last night we had a Montreal salad which has boston lettuce,
tomatoes, cucumber, some cheese, ham, peppercorn salami and summer sausage cut
in strips all with a terrific Caesar dressing. Aslana had the salad bowl, and
licked it clean, running around rubbing her face on the furniture to show that
once again she loved supper.
http://www.naturaldogfood.com/
feeding real food to dogs. The
commercial dog food industry has lost my trust, and I feed Aslana what I eat.
Since being soly on human food, her teeth stay cleaner, her breath is fine, and
her gums are redder. It is not a new thing to do, it is what people fed their
dogs before the dog food industry came along in the 1950's. I can remember
barfing as I put our collie's canned dog food in her bowl, such a revolting
smell. Tigger had a "delicate" stomach and was put on rice and hamburger by the
vet in the 1950's. Dogs are able to process 100% of rice.
Shelties and Poodles are really Smart
I know how smart shelties are. Hazel Slaughter in Montreal was my obedience
teacher at the Dominion Collie and Shetland Sheepdog Ass. Hazel and my sister
Joan bred shelties with each other. My sister's first sheltie was Int. Ch. Bradeen
Brae Brictch Nich CD. bred by Hazel Slaughter. Nicky loved the show ring,
pranced around and won everyone hearts. He loved obedience too, and he loved
people. So When I decided that my life was not worth living without a dog, I
bought my first sheltie from my sister (she did not give anyone dogs) and set
home to Montreal on the plane with Dr. Helen Reynolds the head of Royal Victoria
College, my college at McGill and my faculty advisor. She thought getting a dog
was unwise as it would detract from my studies.
Caper was my sisters first puppy from Laird, her bi coloured ( very rare)
Caper had been a kennel dog in the country and now was living in the middle of
Montreal during the October crisis. So we headed off to obedience class. Caper
had her tail between her legs. She did nothing while I ran around with the
group, sat, called her, all those obedience things for 7 weeks. Hazel said
"Shelties are very smart, and all you have to do is get her tail out from
between her legs. The 8th class was a competition. Caper assessed the situation,
wagged her tail, ran around doing all the obedience perfectly and won first
prize.
We stayed with Hazel for a year, then moved up to our CD level with a new
instructor who had german shepherds. When his dog disobeyed him he picked the
dog up and threw it. Such a contrast to Hazel's methods, and the end of our
obedience days. The world was more dog friendly then, Caper went to McGill with
me, and also to Savoy practices. One of my professors had two students with dogs
in the class. I noticed he looked at Caper from time to time. He said "Oh sure,
when I'm boring the dogs go to sleep, so I try to keep my voice interesting for
dogs." He did have dynamic delivery...
My husband needed a dog so Cinder , a scottish da tracker, arrived. Cinder
was the greatest frisbee hound. My father-in-law once counted throwing the
frisbee 347 times for Cinder in one evening, he got tired, she did not. Cinder
always caught the frisbee, in air or water or under water. Caper did not like to
have things in her mouth becuase she had a tooth which appeared and disappeared
from a broken nose as a puppy. Cinder became a scottish da traker when Ross went
to the store in Cape Breton and she tracked him over a mile and found him.
Tracking is normal skill for many dogs because they smell so much more
than we do.
Dogs solve Problem together
One Thanksgiving Cinder's leg went through a slat sewer on a walk and broke,
so she had a cast on. At first she was sore, but then she found that she could
hit Caper with the cast. Cinder often dropped her kibble in the water bowl to soften
it up. The day before the cast was supposed to come off, we went out. When we
came back, there was white fluid in the water bowl,a trail of plaster, bits and
mud from the dog bowl to our bed, and pieces of cast which Caper obviously
helped . So there you are, what two dogs can do to get rid of a cast, soaking in
water, enlisting willing aid, and keeping on going for the whole thing. That
incident proved to me that dogs have intelligence, no matter what the academic
world was saying.
We brought our baby home from the hospital to the living room floor. Many of
our friends warned us that Caper and Cinder were so spoiled that we would have
to get rid of them. We did not agree. We took all the clothes off the baby and
put her down for the dogs to smell. They smelled her very carefully, and
accepted her. Not too long after I was out with the baby in the pram which I had
parked outside a baby clothes store, with the dogs on their leashes. Next
thing I hear is a woman saying in disgust. "Well look at that she has a pram for
the dogs" What happened was that the lady went to look at the baby in the pram,
and the dogs both leapt into the pram with the baby and were sitting there
snarling at the woman.
Wild Dog still loves kids
When Caper died at the age of 14, we got a male sheltie named Jasper
intending to start my sister's kennel again. Well Jasper was meant to run all
day, and that was what he did. He wore a path on the street side of the
backyard, and the vet said she had never seen a dog who was in such good shape.
Jasper was part of the family, but a wild member. He was always out in the
backyard when the children were out. He bit anyone who came through the gate. In
his mind, people in the back yard had to come through the house. He once bit my
best friend Inger Lise who had steeped through the gate. She said "Ow!"your dog
bit me." I said "You came through the gate which the town made us put in the
fence, and which I hate. Go through the house from now on, and Jasper will never
bite you again. He never did."
I once watched Jasper and my cousins' collie Truce herd the children back
from the drop off to the lake up north at our cottage. The dogs decided it was
dangerous and kept the children on the other side where there was no drop. It
was very beautiful to see a tri colour sheltie and a tri colour collie out
working the kids together. A spiritual moment in my life.
My children were lined up for the school bus on a country road when a big
truck went whizzing down the road. Jasper heard the noise and ran down to
protect his children. He slid in the mud and was killed by the truck. The truck
did not even stop, and it could just as easily been one of my kids.
Tramp Abused in the Past, still hopes for good human
One of our dogs in the country arrived at the bottom of the property as a
mature puppy. One day it was sleeting and Ross asked if we could bring the poor
dog into the house. Tramp was surviving by eating the dog food for the puppy on
the next farm. He had been abused by someone wearing a peaked hat using a hair
brush. Even so he still had faith in humans. Part of Tramp was always sensitive
leading me to think he must have been grazed by bullet, he was a strong dog who
had no problems running after the car at a steady 40 k. We know that teaching
dogs to chase cars is dangerous, but Tramp had so much energy that we started
stopping the car whenever we got to our line and letting him run home. Tramp was
an akita collie cross, an agressive male who placed himself next to Ross. We had
him castrated to calm him down, but as he got older he was more and more Ross's
dog and no one else, which made him dangerous around the children. He was feral,
killing anything in the house which he did not want around from kittens to
puppies. In the dog world, killing a puppy is an indication that the dog does
not have dog manners, healthy dogs never kill puppies.
Tramp loved to go in the car. Whenever I went by myself in the car,
Tramp was there fully prepared to bite anyone and protect me. In a time of car
hi jackings, I never worried for one minute when Tramp was with me in the car.
ANd yet he looked so soft and fuzzy. I went anywhere, parking anywhere (in the
shade) utterly secure that Tramp would bite anyone who even came near the car.
After Jasper died, I changed to collies because I wanted the car driver who
killed my dog to at least have some damage to his vehicle. We had Skeandhu who
was stolen by a neighbour and died in a dog fight, I walked the fields and the
marshes looking for my dog because I felt such horrible confusion from her from
Monday to Friday. On Saturday I had a vision of such a bright green field that I
knew she had died and gone to heaven. Three years later I found out that the
neighbour across the way made his extra bucks from dog fights, simply stealing
pets around the neighbourhood for the victims for his killers.
Butterscotch was my next collie, just coming up to walking with me by
choice at a year when she was killed by a neighbour's tractor. I had just had a
hysterectomy and had to lift the dead dog off the road into a wheelbarrow while
our neighbour looked at the dying dog and said "Looks like she's done for." He
killed her and stopped, but he did not offer to pick her up. Then I sat beside
her crying until my family got home.
Shadow
Then Shadow arrived. Shadow was a pure bred tri colour collie. I had decided
not to have any more blond collies, and set out to find a blue merle puppy, and
found a pregnant mom about 30 minutes from my home. I decided I would have a
puppy, and seemingly passed the breeders secret tests, because she said I could.
So the puppies were born and a blue merle was in the litter. At the same time,
the breeders husband had been sent home to die, so she was a little busy and
asked if I could cope with a pup just weaned. Usually it is wise for the dog to
spend these days with the mom to have good doggie manners, but I was getting the
pup anyway. When I got over there, she handed me a tri colour puppy instead,
saying her husband had taken a fancy to hold the blue merle, and she was not
sure it was sturdy anyway. The last thing I wanted was another dead dog, so I
fell in love with "Me and my Shadow walking down the avenue" Her husband
held the blue merle puppy until he died. At the exact moment he died, so did the
puppy. So I guess that puppy was sent from heaven for him.
Shadow was so small when we brought her home that she got cold. My kitchen
was huge, and the children had out grown my circular wood playpen so I put it up
in the kitchen, hung blankets on it and had one end over a heat duct. We weren't
too sure what Tramp would do, so we paid lots of attention to him and watched
him around the pup. Then we went to Disney World with the kids and the dogs were
in two separate cages at a kennel. Shadow had gone from fuzzy puppy to gangly
ness, and the kennel person decided they needed each other because they were
crying. Obviously Tramp was in love with Shadow and so it was for the rest of
his life.
Shadow and Reid watch TV, Reid always watched the TV from this close and
turned up as loud as possible. It was the only way he could hear it.
Shadow was the most intelligent dog I ever walked with. She talked collie
talk and she talked human talk. She took on my children as her responsibility,
and whatever she wanted from the cupboards like chocolate or some oil, she just
took it without making a mess. I learned that Shadow listened to people talking
and growled when then were lying, especially strangers. When Shadow was old
enough, we decided to breed her with my brother's dog who had saved her life
after a cross country ski accident. So every time Shadow came in heat once she
was old enough to have puppies which is around 5 or 6, she spent a lot of time
at my brother and got pregnant producing 3 puppies in my bed. She was panting
when we went to bed, then we slept, and then heard Shadow barking at something
in our bed. It was a blue merle puppy. I said "Puppy to her, she said "Oh now I
understand" She licked it, and cleaned it up, and gave it a nudge to her
nipples. It did not move there, so she tucked the puppy under the hair at her
elbow and breathed on it to keep it warm while she delivered two more much
bigger pups, cleaned them, bit the cord, ate the afterbirth and was satisfied as
they headed to her nipples. It was Shadow who taught me that a dog's mouth is
our hands in dexterity, she could take her eyetooth and run it around a pups
snout to the edge of the eyes. You try and do that with a q tip to a human.
The little pup eventually died, so I took it out and buried it. That was when
I found out that she could count puppies too. I had to bring the dead pup back
to her, then she accepted that I had "eatten" it myself. In the wild, bitches
eat the dead pups too to hide any signs of vulnerable puppies.
Tramps bed was also in our room on Ross's side of the bed. Shadow was
snarling at Tramp so we would bring him past the whelping box. The male puppy
was named Shadar and went to my brothers. The female stayed with us. Two years
later Shadow had a litter with Toby the black dog next door who she normally
hated. Her pup from her first litter, Drambuie, joined her in the whelping box, doing
everything but nursing. I was amazed to see her cleaning a pup with her eye
tooth.
I believe that each time a child left home that Shadow grieved, especially
Will. She had a heart for kids, and our family grew up. The day she died, she
went out into the backyard in the winds of WEst Luther, choosing a tree she
never sat under. I called her for supper, and she did not come so I went out and
looked for her, and found her under the tree. As she died, her grandchild was
born into a family with kids down the road. I missed the children just as much
as Shadow did and it was really tough for me to decide whether I would ask for a
pup or not.
Bear
We kept Bear a fine black dog, from her second litter who had an
interesting life. He lived with us, but he choose another family as well down at
the parachute club. When we finally figured out what he was doing, we started
phoning each other when Bear seemed gone for a long time.
Whenever we visited my husband's mother in the nursing home, we brought Bear
with us. He would wait for the ice cream sandwich which Ross always brought for
his mother to melt, and lick it up. Then he went on his rounds of the nursing
home. He seemed to know which people wanted a nice dog head in their hand
quietly, and which people wanted him to play, or talk or bark. As a country dog,
Bear was seldom on a leash, and he knew who he wanted to please. One day a new
resident of the nursing home saw Bear and exclaimed, "That dog should be on a
leash." One of Bear's friends said "YOU should be on a leash. He belongs here."
Bear had no training as a social worker, but I think most dogs are sensible when
frail people are around. Bear certainly added to their lives.
Bear went for a walk
one day, and came home bleeding from his spine. He had been shot with 22 through
his spine. This was only two weeks after Shadow laid down in the wind and we did
everything we could, his tail was removed. I was using St. John's wart in his
mouth which would perk him up enough to drink water, and eventaully we got the
front end of Bear working again, but the bullet had done too much damage.
When Bear was shot, it was the end of living in the country. I did not know who
shot him, but I have nothing but scorn for anyone who uses a gun to shot
my dog. leaving him just enough alive to drag himself home. Bear's other family
was as upset as we were.
Bear's favorite thing to eat was sausage mcmuffins, and we used to try to get
to the Golden Arches for him. One day we missed breakfast so Ross got him a
cheeseburger instead, he did not eat it. So when we knew we were going to have
to put Bear to sleep, my daughter stopped at McDonald's on the way, and
explained to the manager what was going on. The manager had the sausage
mcmuffins cooked for Bear's last meal.
Shadow was such an incredible dog that she left big paw prints for any future
dog in my life. My hearing loss had hit a point of really needing hearing aids
and not able to afford them, and after looking at the official hearing ear dog
training schools, that I would get a sheltie and she what she could do with me.
Aggression
I choose a puppy who was just a little aggressive. You check for aggression
by putting the pup on its back. If the pup is not bothered by this, then it is
less aggressive. If the pup fights a little, then the pup has a little
aggression, which was what I wanted. If the pup fights a lot, it is too
aggressive and should not be with someone who is not good or experienced
with dogs.
I get many letters from people who want to train their own hearing ear dog.
It really is a question of the person's understanding of what dogs can really
do, what a breed does naturally IE shelties are always on the qui vive because
they are working dogs, while hounds are better at following a trail. Most hounds
are difficult to work with, but it also always comes down to the dog's love of
his or her family, and one hound might be better than another sheltie.
I read a lot about dogs because they fascinate me probably from having a
collie litter in my play pen as a child, so I am a doggie person. We know so
much more now about what dogs can think and do. So training your dog to work as
a hearing ear dog is up to the both of you. I know that Odessa who is my
daughter's dog beat up Sweetie who is Reid's dog for not being careful enough on
a walk and dumping me in the snow from which I cannot get up. At the same time,
Sweetie saved my life on a black night walk when I had lost the road but leading
me back to the house. Other people, especially dog experts of the former
generation will explain this type of behaviour as random or spontaneous while I
see it as intelligent working in the pack.
Happy Valentines day. Remember to take your hearing ear dog for lunch on
Valentines.
February 10, 2006
PAM Candlish
