‘Sydney’, An Amazing Little Dog
As a busy guest speaker at several organisations, Faye Yarroll shares her inspirational story of living with the latest Cochlear hearing technologies and an Australian Lions Hearing Dog all across Sydney.
Faye was born with a hereditary sensorineural hearing loss, and grew up wearing two hearing aids. Faye lost the minimal hearing at 25 after being hit in the head by a hard snowball; two years later she lost the hearing in her left ear after a reaction to medication. Faye was now profoundly deaf in both ears.
When Faye received her first Cochlear implant, it proved so successful that she was soon implanted in her other ear. These implants changed Faye’s life for the better and she couldn’t be happier; she has long been an advocate for the implants.
Faye lives with her brother Robert, who also has poor hearing and wears two hearing aids. Though Faye considers herself lucky to be living at a time when help for the hearingimpaired has never been better, she found that when she is not wearing her Cochlear processors her ability to react to any emergency is almost zero.
Her brother Robert suffers from various other health issues that often require nighttime assistance when Faye doesn’t wear her processors – it can be a real problem if she misses his call for help.
One day, when talking to another deaf person, Faye learned about the work of the Australian Lions Hearing Dogs (ALHD) organisation. In the Adelaide Hills, there’s a unique dog training centre that produces miracle dogs that improve the life of hearing-impaired people throughout Australia.
The ALHD experts carefully curate dogs that display the important attributes needed for intensive training as helpers for the hearing-impaired. This help includes alerting their owner to noises like a knock at the door, ringing phones, alarm clocks sounding, babies crying and smoke alarms.
Faye realised this sort of Assistance dog would be a major help for her and Robert with their special training. She promptly applied for a Hearing Dog and was delighted when her application was accepted.
Faye received a dog named Sydney in December 2014, a little two-year-old female Beaglier, the beautiful offspring of a Beagle and a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
Faye says she couldn’t have been luckier. Little Sydney is a gem and a true hero, beautiful to look at with a personality to match. She is a wonderful little helper who alerts Faye to various sounds that she can’t hear.
All Australian Lions Hearing Dogs are given free to recipients, and they each have full Public Access Rights and can go anywhere that their owner goes: into shops, theatres, public transport and even aeroplanes.
Faye is now an enthusiastic advocate for ALHD dogs alongside Cochlear technologies. She says, “How lucky am I, a profoundly deaf woman having two Cochlear implants and a beautiful ALHD dog? Both amazing aides enable me to live a happy and fulfilling life. It’s a great feeling!”
For more information on ALHD Programs or to request Faye Yarroll as a guest speaker, call (08) 8388 7836, take a look at https://lionshearingdogs.com.au or follow them on Facebook.
