Living in Silence.
For people who are deaf or who have profound hearing loss, the inability to hear sounds that other people take for granted poses a life-threatening danger. Imagine not being able to hear a fire or smoke alarm, or an oven timer, or someone knocking at your
door. Imagine not being able to hear someone calling your name, or your phone ringing or your baby crying. Living without such sounds is not just difficult or inconvenient, it can be deadly.
At Dogs for the Deaf, we rescue dogs from shelters where they might otherwise be euthanized and professionally train them to identify and respond to sounds like those listed above. By “alerting” a person with hearing loss to the presence of a sound, the
dogs provide a measure of safety, security and independence that nothing else can match. Our dogs have literally saved lives by waking their human partner in the middle of the night as a fire raged through her home. Our dogs have led their human partners to
a spouse who was injured and crying out for help. Our dogs have led their human partners out of their office buildings when the smoke alarms went off. Every day, these hearing heroes help and protect people with profound hearing loss.
Just Like Home. 
Dogs for the Deaf trains our dogs in training apartments, located at our facility in southern Oregon. The apartments, complete with living quarters and kitchens, are designed to mimic the home environments in which hearing dogs will spend most of their time.
Getting used to working everyday household sounds is a critical part of the training and certification process for hearing dogs. Currently, all four of our training apartments are in constant use by our trainers. As the demand for our dogs increases, so does
the need for more training apartments to accommodate training more dogs. The need for an apartment is also felt during tours of our facilities. Dogs for the Deaf welcomes about 1,200 visitors each year. Each visitor wants to see the dogs in training, and rightly
so! Seeing how our training works and watching the dogs in action is the heart and soul of our work. It also leads people to apply for hearing dogs, or to give to our organization, which in turn allows us to rescue more dogs and help more people. But taking
1,200 people a year through the apartments is disruptive to the training process, time-consuming, and confusing and stressful to the dogs.
To accommodate visitors, tours, potential clients and additional trainers, Dogs for the Deaf wants to remodel an existing room at our facility and convert it to a studio apartment. The apartment will be used for training as well as for demonstrations of
the work that hearing dogs do for people and educating the public, donors, and potential clients about the process of training, obtaining and working with a professionally-trained hearing dog.
You Can Be a Hero to both Dogs and People
Your donation will allow Dogs for the Deaf to create the new apartment. The new apartment will allow us to train more dogs and place them with people with hearing loss. The new apartment will allow us to educate the public about our work, reach out to more
potential hearing dog clients, and demonstrate the work of our dogs without disrupting the training of other dogs.
Your gift will allow us to rescue more dogs and help more people. Learn more about us by visiting
www.dogsforthedeaf.org.
Please help us get the word out about our campaign! Follow us on Twitter at @DogsfortheDeaf.
Like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DogsfortheDeaf
and share our work with your friends.
