Havanese Training as a Challenge for Better Signal Dogs
The havanese dog breed’s traits have helped it see plenty of action in a wide spectrum of work roles, although at heart, the havanese is very much a companion dog. The dog’s playful and optimistic disposition and rapidity at absorbing training helps it accomplish tasks that have to do with assisting and helping other people. The Havanese can therefore be a model pet therapy and assistance dog, capable of inspiring and calming people with physical and emotional problems and conditions. In fact, many havanese become expert signal or hearing dogs, with the help of havanese training.
Hearing dogs work on a very sensitive role, since they are essentially the “ears” of people who are hearing impaired. Many organizations carefully choose and train dogs to coordinate closely with hearing impaired persons. These dogs maximize their Havanese training and are efficient at giving signals to their charges when they hear important sounds, like a doorbell, a smoke alarm, or perhaps the sound of an intruder. These dogs work with their disabled handlers inside the home, but many dogs are also trained how to deal and respond to sounds coming from outside, like someone calling the owner’s name. When they hear an important noise, the dog is taught to nudge or put their paws on the handler. For some types of noises, such as a telephone ringing, the dog brings the handler to the source of the noise, and as for other noises, the dog leads the handler away from the noise source.
Far from preferring only dogs from breeders, most organizations get plenty of recruits from shelters, and the motive is both to help the hearing impaired and to rescue dogs. As a we have seen earlier, Havanese have the makings of good signal dogs since they possess good work values, are very dedicated and full of love, absorb sound information well, and love to please their humans. Nevertheless, all dogs regardless of breed must take a temperament test before starting on Havanese training. Then, dogs learn first about obedience, and then are socialized with a variety of situations, scenarios and humans; after this, sound alerting training starts. Some dogs finish training in three months, but most dogs take around a year. Dogs are trained to distinguish among a large number of sounds and to react in the proper way to different sounds. Thus for example, training does not stop with the dog being able to differentiate between a phone ringing and a fire alarm going off, but also extends to which device must the dog bring the human, the phone or the alarm?
Hearing dogs, similar to most assistance dogs, have access to all public structures. To avoid getting them confused with pet dogs, hearing dogs wear a bright orange leash or collar. Many groups get their hearing dogs capes or jackets of a specific color to differentiate among them. While most hearing dogs are professionally prepared by known organizations, plenty of hearing impaired individuals are starting to train their own dogs.
