If you have a disability support takes many shapes; glasses, a hearing aid, a helpful friend, a wheelchair – or a hearing dog. Each person makes a different choice that’s right for them.

 

So, the next time you take out your glasses to read a menu in a restaurant imagine how you would feel if the waiter asked you to remove them – for health and safety reasons.

 

You would feel upset, humiliated and vulnerable. You would almost certainly take your custom elsewhere in future. That’s similar to how it feels for a hearing dog user who is refused access because their dog is with them. But, 80% of hearing dog recipients who responded to our survey, indicated they had been refused access at some time. 

 

This can happen if someone doesn’t recognise a hearing dog is a Registered Assistance Dog, or doesn’t understand the law on Assistance Dogs (perhaps confusing it with other legislation around health and safety) or simply doesn’t understand the very special nature of a partnership between a deaf person and a hearing dog. 

 

From my personal experience I can tell you that these partnerships are life-changing, life-enhancing and, sometimes, life-saving. In my own case I became deaf in my 30s following a bacterial infection. Marsh, my hearing dog, has become the mechanism by which I cope with my hearing loss. I would feel isolated and vulnerable – unnerved in fact – if he wasn’t allowed to accompany me in both my professional and social life. 

 

Hearing Dogs for Deaf People is working hard to make sure all deaf people working with a hearing dog can be assured of their support wherever they want to go – and you can help. The distinctive Hearing Dog jackets and lead slips help service providers and members of the public recognise a hearing dog. They show that the dog wearing them is a professional, working dog who has received extensive training in good behaviour as well as specialist sound-work skills.

 

Through this ‘Let Us In’ Appeal we hope to raise funds to pay for jackets and slips for all the hearing dogs we will place in 2013 and to contribute to the behaviour training they will all require to pass the Kennel Club Good Citizen training awards. Our target is £25,000.

 

Could you help? Just £20 would buy essential training aids required for vital behaviour training or £40 would pay for the distinctive Hearing Dogs jacket and lead slip for a new hearing dog. 

 

Thank you so very much

 

Phil Biggs

Access & Inclusion Manager