Training & Lessons

Training hearing dogs is a challenging task. The majority of hearing dogs go to hearing-impaired people who mostly live alone, so proper training is really significant in as much as the hearing dog can save its master’s life, like in the case of fire alarms.

Hearing dogs are selected and tested if they have the natural inclination to work and assist people, and to hear and react to sounds. They are taught to follow basic commands through voice and hand signals. Some of these commands are sitting, staying in place, lying down, walking with a hearing-impaired handler and coming when it is called by its master or handler. Since hearing dogs need to assist their masters outdoors, they are also trained to explore public places, and taught on how to behave in different locations like escalators, elevators, taxicabs, shopping carts, and in different kinds of commercial establishments.

The most crucial aspect of training hearing dogs is the enhancement of their sound awareness skills. Here, the dogs are instructed on how to distinguish a particular sound and then make their handlers aware of the source of the sound. Since sounds come from a variety of sources, the dog’s reaction to each specific sound will be accordingly varied, like how to react to doorbells, door knocks, fire alarms, whistle blows, phone rings, Before a professionally-trained hearing dog is given to a hearing-impaired individual, it will will be examined if it can respond to basic commands 90 percent of the time. The dog must also react to a certain sound through creating a standard alerting behavior within 15 seconds from the beginning of the sound.