Hearing-ear dogs are used by the deaf, so they can live more independently.  The dogs are helpful by alerting their master when the doorbell rings, the alarm clock goes off, or when the kettle boils, just to name a few.  The American Humane Association is in charge of giving people with hearing loss information about hearing-ear dogs.

In 1974, one deaf woman lost her dog.  This dog had been trained to alert the woman if the doorbell rang.  The woman contacted the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and asked for help.  The SPCA decided to replace the dog, and they trained it for her.  The SPCA extended this service to other deaf people in the area. 

The SPCA soon turned over the project to the American Humane Association.  The Association today doesn’t train the dogs anymore, it just educates people with disabilities about the seventeen dog training schools in the U.S.  There are over 3 million citizens in the U.S. that are deaf, and over 14 more with some kind of hearing loss.   

Hearing-ear dogs must be friendly, energetic, and alert.  They also need to be sweet-tempered.  Most hearing-ear dogs are small to medium sized because many people who need them live in small houses or apartments.  The dogs used for the hearing-ear dog program are rescued from animal shelters and would have otherwise have been put down. 

Unlike the guide dog program, these trainers use both mixed-breeds and pure-breeds.  Some of the mixed-breeds they use are terriers, poodles, spaniels, dachshunds, and German shepherds. One program in California, however, only uses purebred Schipperkes, Border Collies, and Corgis in their training.    

Each one of the seventeen training programs in the U.S. has a slightly different method of training.  They all, however, start training at about 24 months.