Kennel Club gives £30,000 to train new hearing dogs
The Kennel Club Charitable Trust has awarded the charity Hearing Dogs for Deaf People a grant of £30,000 to help towards training three new hearing dogs.
With one person in every seven experiencing some degree of hearing the loss, the work of the charity is crucial. Special hearing dogs are trained to alert deaf people to everyday household sounds and danger signals in the home, work place and in public buildings, to promote independence.
It takes 18 months to train a hearing dog and begins with puppy socialisation with volunteers before moving on to sound work training at a specialist centre. During this period a suitable recipient for each dog is identified. The recipient and hearing dog then spend a period of time training together before qualifying as an official partnership.
Michele Jennings, CEO of Hearing Dogs for Deaf People said: “As the only charity in the UK to specialise in this kind of training for hearing dogs, we would like to be able to extend the number of partnerships across the UK and this funding is a great step towards helping more people.
“Hearing dogs are provided to deaf people at no charge and each dog is trained to the specific needs of the deaf individual they have been matched to, creating a life-changing partnership. This funding from the Kennel Club Charitable Trust will help us to train three new hearing dogs and create lifelong partnerships.”
There are currently over 750 working partnerships in place between hearing dogs and deaf people nationwide. This figure is soon to be 753 with the help and generosity of the Kennel Club Charitable Trust.
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