Trust my dog – and a lesson about smoke alarms.

Sally is my devoted hearing dog. She totally trusts me to care for her, feed her and take her walks. In return she has been highly trained to be my Hearing dog.

Her main line of “work” is alerting me when the doorbell rings, or the smoke alarm rings. She also tells me when the kitchen timer rings, and if we were around when a fire alarm went off – she would let me know.

I can take her anywhere I go, into shops, cafes, and hotels. Hearing dogs and other assistance dogs have that privilege to accompany their owners wherever they go.

She is a Lowchen – a breed I had never heard of until I met her, a lovely nature, good loyal worker, and she loves to have somewhere to run off the lead when we go for walks.

Sally the lovely Lowchen

Trust my dog

Without my hearing aids I cannot hear anything at all – being profoundly deaf. Even when I wear the aids I never hear the smoke alarm, but Sally does, and it goes off quite frequently. Just a slight burn of the toast, or too high a flame under the omelet pan can set it off.  So I am usually around the kitchen when the smoke alarm happens, and Sally taps me with her paws, and when I ask, “what is it” – she lies down flat.

I then check the alarm and can see that the green light has turned red. After making sure that all is safe in the kitchen, I poke the alarm with a walking stick until it turns green again.

It took far longer to write that, than it does to do it!

Sally is usually in the same room, as she keeps a close watch on me, but if necessary she would very soon find me if there was need of an alert. If I were in bed, she would jump on the bed to wake me.

Sally in uniform

Yesterday there were several bonfires and firework displays around the area, being the Saturday before Guy Fawkes bonfire night on November 5^th.  Sally is trained to not be frightened by fireworks and such like.

However, at 2am this morning Sally jumped onto my bed to wake me. “What is it” I asked her- sleepily. She lay down on the floor, so I jumped to attention and checked both the smoke alarms. They were both green, so couldn’t be ringing! I did a quick check of the house, and out the back door.  I sent her out into the garden in case she was telling me she needed to toilet (she never has done that during the night – but always a first time I thought).

All seemed normal so back to bed we went. Her bed is beside mine on the floor.

Well Sally could not settle, she jumped on and off my bed every few minutes – and I finally concluded that maybe there were some fireworks worrying her. I dozed off, but was aware that she was on alert for the rest of the night. I eventually woke up to find her watching me from the end of the bed – never happened before.

We got up and went for a walk, where she seemed fine and then had her normal breakfast. Then she started again, putting her paws gently onto me to tell me something. Time and time again she did this. I got worried that she was having some sort of nerve problem. She actually seemed quite worried.

About 3.30pm we went for a walk on the beach, the sun would set early at 4.30 so need to get a walk in daylight. It was nice, the tide was out and we had a good walk towards the edge of the waves. Sally enjoyed sniffing clumps of seaweed, and a variety of shells brought in by the tide, and managed to chase a few birds .

On our way home from walk..

As we walked back to the drive of the house, Marjorie my neighbour beckoned, so we called to see her and had a chat. I am choosing some new carpet for the house, so asked Marjorie to come and see what she thought of my choice.

She loved the carpet, but as we stood talking in the hall, she said a bell was ringing – thought it was a spare door bell that I keep for practise. I took the batteries out – but Marjorie said there was still an intermittent ringing. I thought maybe it was my hearing aids so we moved to another room. No it stopped then!

Back to the hall and the ringing was heard again. She asked where my smoke alarm was – it is in the hall, and another one upstairs. We finally realized they were the culprits. I found the instructions to the smoke alarms, and discovered that when the batteries are becoming exhausted, the alarm bleeps every 20 to 30 seconds. I wasn’t even aware they had batteries in because they are wired into the electric.

I got out the ladder, but we were unable to do the awkward manipulation of turning and pressing routine to take off the outer part and check the batteries! As luck would have it, Marjories’ son was due to visit soon, and sure enough he came and took the outer parts off so we could identify which batteries were needed. I raced off to the local petrol station and bought 2 of the 9volt batteries, and now they are all back in good working order.

During this process up the ladder and changing the batteries, Sally was forever alerting me again, but now of course, I realized how amazing she had been. She never gave up trying to tell me something was amiss.

My lesson is to always trust her – and in future if I don’t understand what she means, I will get a hearing person to come and listen for untoward sounds.

Thank you Sally – my trust in you is complete. I am so fortunate to have her.

Sally with garden friends.