Hearing dogs need to be able to alert to a wide range of different sounds including doorbells, fire alarms, traffic sounds and the sound of another person speaking to their handler, just to name a few. Given the importance of the alert for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, hearing alerts need to be trained to fluency and well-generalized. There are two kinds of hearing alerts. When performing a one-way alert, the dog alerts the owner to a sound, typically by touching the owner with their nose or paw. When a hearing dog performs a two-way alert, the dog leads the owner to the sound source after alerting.
Hearing Alert Training Tips
- Practice training a hearing alert with a dog that does not need to perform this task
If you have never trained a hearing alert, it is important to first go through the process with a dog that does not actually need to perform this task to assist the owner. The process involves teaching the dog to respond to a sound in the environment. Essentially the sound becomes the cue for the dog to perform the alert behavior. For example, a door knock becomes the cue for the dog to nudge the owner’s leg with their nose. Although this process seems simple and straightforward, in reality it can be surprisingly tricky. Not all dogs will readily pay attention to all sounds, and for some dogs, pairing the sound with the alert will take longer than expected. Also, trainers often accidentally teach the dog to respond to inadvertent visual cues rather than the actual sound. The dog needs to perform the alert behavior quickly, persistently repeating the alert if the person does not notice. Experimenting with a dog that does not actually need to perform the alert provides a safe way to work through and troubleshoot the process.
- Teach the alert behavior to fluency before pairing it with a sound
Training a dog to do a nose nudge or paw touch often takes just one or two training sessions. It is very tempting to immediately pair the alert behavior with the sound as soon as the dog performs it. However, consider that the dog will need to be able to alert from various positions and orientations to the handler. The owner may be standing, sitting or lying down when the dog needs to alert. The alert behavior also needs to be reliably on cue, either with a visual or verbal cue. If the dog does not perform the alert behavior easily and fluently on cue before pairing the behavior with the sound, that portion of the training process will be inefficient at best or possibly completely unsuccessful.
Keeping the momentum going in the process of pairing the sound with the alert is important. If you have paired the behavior with the sound, and then realize you have not fully generalized the alert behavior, you will have to take a step back, and you will likely need return to using your original cue. This frequently undoes any progress the dog has made on learning the sound cue, so you will have to start over at the beginning when you are again ready to pair the sound with the alert behavior. This restart can cause the process to take longer than if you had generalized the alert fully before trying to pair it with a sound.
- Choose a unique sound you don’t actually need the dog to alert to
Be thoughtful when selecting a sound to train as the first alert. It is tempting to use a unique alarm from a smart phone. However, many dogs become habituated to the sounds made by these devices. For some dogs using an old-fashioned egg timer or another physical alarm can be easier. It is always a good idea to first teach an alert to a sound that the owner does not actually need the dog to respond to. That way if you encounter challenges in the training process, you can simply change to a different sound.
- Avoid accidentally habituating the dog to the alert
Whichever sound you use for a first alert, you will want to make sure that you do not accidentally habituate the dog to the sound during the training process. Allowing for a few moments of silence between repetitions is important, but trainers new to teaching alerts may do repetitions too frequently. The contrast between silence and the alert sound helps the dog notice the alert sound. Also, it is important not to play the alert sound in the dog’s presence at all outside of the training context. This runs the very high risk of teaching the dog the opposite of alerting: ignoring the sound. It can be very difficult to train an alert to a sound the dog has become habituated to.
Teaching a dog to alert their owner to a sound can seem very simple for trainers new to hearing dog task training. After all, it simply involves adding a new cue to a simple alert behavior. However, it is critical to plan your training process for sound alerts very carefully, because the process can easily go astray. Once a training error has occurred, it is especially challenging to undo it, so taking care from the start will set your team up for success.
Learn how to train hearing alerts, scent-based medical alerts and response tasks in the Alert and Response Tasks Course
