Hearing dogs help people in their day to day lives, but they often perform much more important tasks.
Calling for help
Meniere’s disease, a rare condition sometimes causing total deafness, can also make its victims collapse and go into shock for up to four hours. Whenever this happens to Lyn, a Victorian recipient, her hearing dog Mac goes to the phone and knocks its receiver off the stand. Eight seconds later a device fitted to the phone sends an emergency call for an ambulance.
Terrific Ted
Ted was trained to alert his owner to an alarm that sounded when the stomach feeding tube of his owner’s foster daughter became blocked. This saved the girl’s life on a number of occasions.