In 1993 Ernie Callow was hanging Christmas lights on the roof of his home when he slipped. The fall fractured his skull and doctors worried the damage sustained to his back would leave him in a wheelchair. Now 13 years later, everyday he's up, Callow says, is a good day.
From the outside, it looks as though the accident hasn't had lasting effects on Callow, but some injuries still linger.
The skull fracture had affected Callow's inner ear and left him with a "dead ear," meaning his right ear heard nothing. The injury to his ear had also affected his balance. For many years the lack of hearing in his right ear was an impediment, but one that was manageable.
As Callow grew older the hearing in his left ear, from use and overcompensating for the right, had progressively worsened, leaving him with about 50 per cent hearing with an hearing aide and effectively nothing without one. Removing his hearing aide, Callow comments wryly, means he's “about done for the night.”
Because Callow's hearing loss has been progressive, it wasn't until a particular incident a few years ago that he felt he needed to do something about his disability.
"We live at the lake, and one morning I was woken up by a neighbour. He came into my house, in my hallway yelling my name, and then into my bedroom.
“I asked him what he was doing here and he said my alarm went off and I argued with him and said no it didn't. Then I called the security company and, sure enough, it had. There's two alarms in my house and I missed both of them."
This close call led Callow to look into a cochlear implant but found out he wasn't a candidate because he is not completely deaf in his left ear.
Callow didn't know what other options were available to him until, by chance, one day at Tim Horton's in Saskatoon he saw a woman with a labrador retriever and asked if he could pet it. The dog turned out to be the woman's husband’s hearing dog. Callow says he hadn’t realized that service dogs could be trained to help people who are hearing impaired. The chance encounter, Callow says, gave him something to investigate further and introduced him to the Lions Foundation’s Dog Guides program.
The Lions Foundation service dog program began in 1985 to help visually impaired individuals and was known as Canine Vision Canada. In the 31 years since its founding, the program has grown to provide service dogs to individuals suffering from epilepsy, autism, hearing loss and diabetes as well as assisting people with physical disabilities.
Soon after Callow first discovered Dog Guides he had applied and two months later, in Oct. 2014, a coordinator came for a home visit. Within a week Callow was approved and joined the program, although the next steps proved to be more timely.
The process was a long one and Callow didn’t hear from the program for the six months following his approval in Oct. So, growing impatient to begin life with his hearing dog, Callow began inquiring over the phone to the Ontario office when he might receive a dog. Always Callow would receive the same response: “we’re waiting to find a match for you.” Callow says the program’s answer to his inquiry confused him and he would often wonder how they even knew what his match was, but still, he remained optimistic.
Then, in April of this year, Callow finally heard back from a coordinator with Dog Guides. There would be a training class for hearing impaired individuals in June 2016 in Oakville, Ontario.
“We got our dog for half an hour on the first day. They came into our rooms and when they presented me with Lyra and she came to me (I was) thinking, oh she's not going to stay with me,” Callow explains, “but she came to me and laid by my left side.
“I said to the trainer ‘she's so calm and gentle’ and Tracy, the head trainer, said ‘well Ernie, that's why you waited so long. We had to find a dog that matched to your needs and you told us you had a balance problem’.” Callow says smiling, apparently amused by their thoroughness, “I had put it on my application and I had forgot about it.”
Now, with dog guide Lyra by his left side (she was trained to stay always on his left, where he still has some hearing), Callow is glad the extra time was taken to find his match and train Lyra for his specific needs.
Lyra, like all the dogs in Dog Guide's various programs, was bred at the Oakville headquarters and sent to a foster home until she was a year old before reentering the program for training. For six months the dogs receive half an hour of classes until they are ready to meet the individuals they are assigned to. About a quarter of the dogs don’t complete training, usually due to existing conditions or temperament, and instead are put up for adoption.
Lyra, a calm but still playful black Lab, received training to accommodate people with hearing impairment. She responds to nine sounds including knocking on a door, a ringing telephone, an alarm and the words “Ernie,” “grandpa,” and “dad.” When Lyra hears one of these sounds, depending on what it is, she gets Callow’s attention by putting her paws on his knee, or in the case of an alarm being sounded, she paws his knee and turns in a circle.
During the two weeks Callow spent in Oakville he says it was like the trainers were “trying to teach an old dog new tricks,” and he wasn’t talking about Lyra. The training was intensive for each person, where the task became teaching the dog’s new owners how to respond to the dog's actions. Lyra has the ability to alert Callow to a person knocking on the door, but she needs his participation and awareness as well.
Since getting Lyra in June, Callow has already participated in fundraising for the program back in Saskatchewan. On Sept. 1 he was presented with a cheque for $4,000 to the Dog Guides program from Dave and Sharon Taylor, the owners of North Battleford's McDonald's, a donation that Callow and his wife matched. More recently, on Sept. 17 Callow also came out to support a fundraising barbecue hosted by the Order of the Eastern Star that raised $700 for Dog Guides. Since he's retired, Callow says, he has time to give back to the program that has given him so much.
Callow also says he wants to become involved with the lions Foundation's Dog Guides program on a local level, so that people in a similar position to the one he found himself are aware that there are options for dealing with disabilities.
