Hearing Dog Training

New Hearing Dog Program Started in San Francisco – Hooray!!!
Over a period of 30 years the Hearing Dog Program at the San Francisco SPCA graduated more than 800 Hearing Dog teams. Then, suddenly and without notice, it was gone. Former staff, volunteers, and graduates decided the program must live on as a new, totally independent non-profit organization, appropriately called, The Hearing Dog Program.[ www.hearingdogprogram.org ]
Despite challenging economic times, and with only three part-time employees, we have already managed to graduate 9 dogs. Seven more are in training as of April 2010. Three cheers to Martha Hoffman, our Training Director!!! With very little money but lots of enthusiasm, we are determined to succeed. We look at this as a wonderful opportunity to try new things and improve upon the old program.
A new and exciting training model has been developed. Instead of holding group classes, placements are all accomplished using an in-home model. Of course, other Assistance Dog programs had already proven this approach could be highly successful. But wait, there’s more! Here’s where the real change occurred…Realizing we didn’t have kennels and probably wouldn’t for a while, we still wanted to train and place dogs right away. So, we developed a new training model that didn’t depend on having a kennel facility.
We recruited experienced, professional agility and obedience trainers interested in training a Hearing Dog at their home. Although they didn’t know anything about sound alert training, they were eager to learn and participate. Now dogs could go directly from the shelter into a home for their training.
Has this new in-home training model worked? Absolutely! Under Martha Hoffman’s capable guidance and supervision our dogs are better than ever. No more dealing with kennel stress, plus dogs get all the in-home advantages of living with a trainer. Dogs are now ready to graduate in about ½ the time it previously required while living in kennels.
A great example of our dedicated, capable volunteer foster Hearing Dog trainers is Blancett Reynolds. Blancett is a top-notch agility Instructor at ACE Dog Sports south of San Francisco. Between 2005 and 2008 she taught foster care education at Dogs for Diabetics and currently supervises a puppy-raising group for Guide Dogs for the Blind (San Rafael).
Blancett started with a Yellow Labrador “career change” dog named, Stacy, from Guide Dogs for the Blind. Stacy flew through her Hearing Dog training and graduated in May 2009. Next Blancett accepted a little rescued shelter dog named Mindy into her home. Although Mindy didn’t complete her Hearing Dog training, when we received her she was (unbeknownst to us) pregnant with a single pup named Patch. Patch is now doing very well in both obedience and sound alert training.
Since our foster trainer model worked so well, we decided to expand it further. We began placing some dogs directly into the homes of Deaf or hard of hearing people who had already had Hearing Dogs to undergo sound and obedience training. The clients were able to train their own successor dogs with our help! With Martha visiting at least once a week to provide instruction and supervise their training, our dogs progressed rapidly. Soon they were ready to graduate.
With two new models in place, The Hearing Dog Program is already fulfilling its mission of “improving independence and quality of life through highly trained Hearing Dogs” in an efficient and innovative fashion. We’re excited for the future!
See Martha Hoffman’s blog describing what typically happens during our training visits, plus training games to teach new skills to Hearing Dog in a fun way.
http://marthahoffman.info/blogs/blog6.php/2010/03/30/hearing-dog-training-visiting-skunki-at-her-foster-trainer-home