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June 14, 2007
What children hear keeps them socialized and safe. The hearing loss  experienced by Justin, age ten, meant he could not participate socially like other children. Justin could not know if someone called him from another room. Enter Oreo, a Dogs For The Deaf trained Hearing Dog who alerted Justin to the sounds of his world. Dogs For The Deaf in Central Point, Oregon, has been rescuing dogs from shelters and training them as Hearing Dogs for thirty years. All the dogs are special and bring freedom and peace of mind to deaf recipients, but some stories stay in the minds of trainers and staff more than others do. Justin’s is one of those stories.
Dogs For The Deaf seldom places assistance dogs with young children, but  Justin and his family were such a good fit they decided to go ahead and try the unusual. It was a good decision. With Oreo by his side, Justin rose through the ranks of the California Cadet Corps to become the Corps’ leader, and by age 17 he had won many awards.
More commonly, a Hearing Dog placed with a young child’s deaf parent. One dog alerted a young, deaf mother to her daughter’s heart monitor alarm, another alerted a mother whose toddler had tipped over in a walker. One dog alerted a father to his daughter’s call to help close a drawer. “The father had only had the Hearing Dog a couple of weeks,” explains Robin Dickson, CEO of Dogs For The Deaf. “She called her dad, and for the first time in the little girl’s life her dad came when she called.”
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