hardofhearingchildren.com by PAM Candlish MLS
"What did you say?" "Eh?" "WHAT did you say?" "MM?" "WHAT DID YOU SAY?" oh "PARDON ME!"

Training my Own Hearing Ear Dogs.

In February,
we pass idle moments
of winter with treats for people we love.
A confirmed chocoholic myself, I wait for February 15 when the valentines candy goes on sale and stock up.   Managing a chocolate supply is one of the things I do for ME.  The best thing I learned this year is Chocolate is an antioxidant.

For those of us who have animals help us cope with the lack of noise in our world, Valentine's Day is a good time to take the "dogs" to a drive through for lunch. Bear liked Sausage McMuffins best. One day Ross just missed breakfast at the Golden Arches and bought the dog a quarter pounder with cheese. Bear wanted his sausage McMuffin, Ross had to eat the hamburger.

Dogs help hard of hearing People.

When I was writing the book, I spent a day at the Hearing Ear dog school, watching the selection and training. At the time there were no hearing ear dogs placed with children, and I thought Reid would do well to have his own hearing  ear dog as a child. In the late 1990s a few placements with children were done and proved more successful than expected.

Today service dog training is a charitable industry, and I would have to say that they are dog snobs because they insist on a two step program with the dog fostered for a year, then trained very well and provided  to the person with special needs. They would not consider my dogs to be hearing ear dogs, yet my dogs choose to help me which is a very strong bond between both of us. There is also a growing group of people who feel as I do that a hard of hearing person is quite capable of starting with a puppy or even an older dog and ending up with a helping loving friend..

http://www.pawstofreedom.com/sdtrain.htm

http://www.deltasociety.org/nsdc/sdhelp.htm

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7930/

Service Dog definition from ADA

 The ADA defines a service animal as any guide dog, signal dog, or other animal individually trained to provide assistance to an individual with a disability. If they meet this definition, animals are considered service animals under the ADA regardless of whether they have been licensed or certified by a state or local government.
 

Shelties and Collies in the Family

For all my life there has been dogs beginning with a litter of collie pups in my playpen.  My sister Joan had a sheltie kennel, she was interested in breeding dogs which would be good at herding, obedience and tracking and conformation. My first sheltie was Caper who went to McGill with me and earned her BARK while I earned my BA. My second sheltie was Jasper who died saving his family from a dump truck. (Some of Jasper's idiosyncracies are mentioned in Inger Lise's obituary below)

Sweetie

Sweetie is our all-Canadian hearing ear dog. Her mother is my brother's border collie in  Quebec, her father was a Newfie, and she was conceived in Prince Edward Island. When my brother phoned Reid and asked if he wanted a puppy, we thought it would be a good idea for Reid to have his own dog in his room in case of fire. Sweetie choose Reid when she was tiny, and moved to our house when she was big enough. At the time, my collie Shadow  was the boss, with her son Bear as second in command, and Sweetie lived in the hall closet or under the coffee table, and slept in Reid's room. Shadow was a talker, and my earth partner for 10 years. Shadow had been very happy as the dog of a huge family, and when the children moved out, she was unhappy, as I was. Shadow died without a fuss one March night just as her grandchildren were being born down the road. Two weeks later Bear was shot through his spine, and lost his tail. He never recovered from the surgery.  A manager at a McDonalds arranged to put a Sausage McMuffin grill up in the afternoon when she learned that we had to take Bear to the vet for the last time. Barbara brought sausage McMuffins for Bear's last meal.

Reid's Dog Sweetie, becomes Boss dog

So Sweetie had to go from not-important dog to boss dog at a time when she was heart-broken by the deaths of Shadow and Bear. She had grown to the size of her mother by the time she was 3, after Shadow death she grew more, which makes her a great dog to take for a walk.. Reid had non-verbal communication with Sweetie, I think the dog gave him time out from listening, and Sweetie loves Reid. Sweetie needed another dog that would always be smaller, and I decided to get a sheltie to help me cope with the world which I was hearing less and less.

Aslana my self-trained hearing ear dog

At 6 weeks Aslana was resistant to being turned on her back which meant she had a stubborn streak which I thought would be good for a hearing ear dog. When Aslana was a puppy, I read an article in a dog magazine that recommended 7 different foods, 7 different surfaces to walk on, 7 different types of people. As shelties tend to be shy with strangers, I thought it would be fun to try this idea out. Arriving at Tiffany's apartment in Montreal with the tiny 6 week old puppy as a surprise, my daughter phoned her friends and had a puppy party. Then we stayed in a motel on the way home, and Aslana had her first shower. Aslana is not shy at all, due to about 100 different people who met her between our two houses. She surprises people by joining them in the shower whenever she can.

Throw the puppy

The only reason depressed Sweetie tolerated Aslana at all was because she was a puppy, and it is absolutely wrong for any dog to harm a puppy. Shadow had not allowed dogs to play ball, and we were teaching Sweetie who had Shadow's disdain for the ball while Aslana had an a in ball skills, herding a huge beach ball and playing soccer with a smaller one, and fetching tennis balls. Periodically Sweetie would watch and seem to say "Throw the puppy, I'll get her all right".

Phone Rings, Dog barks

Right now Aslana is barking to tell me that someone is at the door.  I do not hear a phone ring without my hearing aids. She started to do this when she was 5 months old. We were having a month up at the summer house in Sept, and I caught a horrible head cold. My brother kept phoning to see if I was all right. I wanted nothing more than to lie down and die, but still the phone rang, and the dog barked until I answered the phone. Aslana is a sheltie, so she has a loud irritating bark. She always barks when the phone rings, a help for me which she developed all by herself.

Call Person, Dog goes to Person and Barks

In our last house, the TV was in the attic, so Reid was in the attic. When supper time came, I called Reid in a good motherly yell, and Aslana would whip up to the attic and bark at Reid until he came down. When other family members were around, Aslana would differentiate the names and bark at whomever I had called. I was surprised by how fast she learned names of other people. I always use the same tone to call which tells Aslana I want her to go and bark at a person.  Since moving to Guelph, we have tenants in our home who are like a large family. Aslana barks for the tenants by name too. She has so many friends in this house that we have bought weight-reduction dog food for her.

Thank you Aslana and Sweetie

I am using the dogs natural ability to guard and bark as they offers it to me and Reid. Perhaps the dogs see me as the shepherd, and the family as the sheep. It is important to start this type of relationship with a clear understanding of dog body language, "speech" and social habits, and few pre-conceived notions about what dogs can't do. Aslana's only command from me is "Sit". Other tenant are teaching her to lie down, jump up, give paw, and she is training them to give her treats...Sweetie too.

A lot of Aslana's communication to me was too quiet for me to hear. After I got my hearing aids, I found out that she says "mmmm" very quietly when she needs to go out.

 I say "Thank you Aslana" every time she barks. Eventually she might get to understand that thank you means barked enough, we are still working on that.

PAM Candlish

7 Feb 2004

How to Speak Dog

My favorite book this year is How to Speak Dog by Stanley Coren. New York:Fireside,2001 274 p. index. ISBN 0-684-86534-3. 

Dr. Coren provides a dictionary to understand what dogs are saying with their bodies, eyes , mouths and tails. Along the way he has many interesting comparisons to the development of human speech. For example, a small human learns the names of things by pointing a finger and saying the phoneme or word. A dog cannot point his finger, so what does he do? Of course he points his nose. Since reading this I have been experimenting with Aslana, and it works.

He also has a delightful and fascinating section on sign used with monkeys in chapter 15. I felt at the end of the book, that I still wanted to read more, and read the whole book again. It is a delightful place to romp while we work with our hard of hearing children.