For more than 35 years, Dogs for the Deaf has been rescuing dogs from shelters and professionally training them to assist and enhance the lives of people with a variety of disabilities and challenges. Dogs for the Deaf makes a lifetime commitment to each dog and person to provide ongoing guidance and help to ensure both are receiving maximum benefits from one another. They train the dogs for one of three different categories: Hearing Assistance Dogs, Autism Assistance Dogs and Program Assistance Dogs.

Dogs for the Deaf commits to having every dog spayed or neutered before being placed in a home. Thanks to a grant from BISSELL Pet Foundation, Dogs for the Deaf was able to spay/neuter 22 rescue dogs to prepare them for professional training and their new homes. As the dogs proceed through the training, some are found to be better suited for a “career change”. These dogs are wonderful pets that are happy and healthy, but are a better fit as a family pet instead of an assistance dog.  Dogs for the Deaf helps them find happy homes, like other shelters or rescues would. Of the 22 pets supported by BISSELL Pet Foundation, 9 of the dogs became Hearing Assistance Dogs and the other 13 took the Career Change path to find loving, forever homes.

Chevy

Chevy is one of the Hearing Assistance dogs helped by BISSELL Pet Foundation.  He was placed with a 33-year old man who lived in a house next door to his parents. When Chevy was in training, his adopter’s mother asked for a demonstration of the smoke detector training. She wanted to know with certainty that Chevy would indeed wake up her son if there was a fire. The alarm was activated and Chevy jumped up and down on his owner who was pretending to sleep. In fact, Chevy did not stop jumping until the man finally arose. Tears of joy and gratitude ran down the mother’s face as she realized she would no longer have to worry about her son’s safety in the event of a fire.  Chevy is just one example of the amazing assistance dogs trained by Dogs for the Deaf that are helping increase freedom and independence for their owners.