Frank, Big Dog, excuse my ignorance, but, like Dori, I fail to see the need of a dog for a deaf person. What service(s) do they provide?
My very good friend Big Dog and I are naturally going to disagree--but not being primitives, it doesn't affect our liking for each other--because of wholly-different life experiences, but a dog can be of invaluable service to a deaf person.
A dog can be trained to sense that its owner can't hear, and that its job is to alert its owner when the dog hears some noise the dog interprets as indicating something or someone dangerous.
This is what I mean by there's more perils and hazards for franksolich while at home, then there are when I'm out and about. I live out in the middle of nowhere, the nearest neighbor six miles away, but with a semi-major highway just two miles north of here. This is the only residence for miles and miles around that looks as if occupied. I
can use a special telephone, but it's clumsy and awkward.
It's a natural place for people to approach if they're in some sort of trouble (car trouble, whatnot) or if they're looking to create some mischief.
One of the consequences of being deaf is that one isn't aware of what's behind one, or on either side of one; only what's in front of one. Hearing people might hear a noise or something, and turn around to look, but I of course hear no noise.
The hippywife primitive Mrs. Alfred Packer's hippyhubby Wild Bill could be noisily trampling around inside this house right now, and I'd be the last person to know it (unless, of course, he was right in front of me). He could come up to me from behind and garrote me, and I'd never know what happened.
Big Dog might have some other uses for a service dog, but that's what I consider the essential purpose of them; to warn one that danger
might be in the offing. I can't think of any other purpose, but perhaps he can.
Currently, my situation is that there's five cats here, who came with the place, who seem to "understand" that I can't hear, and raise a ruckus when they sense that something isn't
kosher, and want to alert me about it. They're very good at it, but alas I don't give them as much credence as I would a dog (since cats aren't as bright as dogs).
Three summers ago, a tornado (fortunately only a small one) swept through this place during the middle of the night, doing considerable property damage, and some minutes before it came, the cats scrambled all over my sleeping body, to wake me up. Ultimately giving up, they high-tailed it to the bathroom.
I half-slept through the whole thing; never knew it'd happened until I woke up the next morning.
If a dog'd done that, I would've wakened up sharply, "oh, something's wrong....."
It's been recommended for years that I get a dog to "hear" for me--here at home--but there's the problem with all these cats, and their incompatibility with dogs. And the cats were here first. I'm basically waiting for the cats to die--the youngest one's now eight years old--after which I plan to go to the veterinary and adapt two mutts nobody else wants and train them to "listen" for me.
