Hearing dog and recipient
graduate in the same week

DR Christine Maddern from Richmond, North Yorkshire, received her PhD from the University of York at the end of January – in the same week that her hearing dog Reggie qualified as a fully trained hearing dog!

Christine lost her hearing after contracting meningitis aged five. She developed a love of reading and embarked on a career working in libraries and other roles involving books, then worked as a civil servant in the Department for Education. Aged 55, she started working on her doctorate in early medieval stone sculpture in Northumbria – but she still found that her hearing loss made it hard for her to meet and talk to people outside of work. She says: “I’m overjoyed to have achieved my PhD after a lifetime of study. And now I’ve got Reggie, I’m starting to meet more people. They see his burgundy Hearing Dogs coat and realise I’m deaf. They stop and chat and want to know all about how such a small dog can be such a huge help to me.”

Reggie, a little Yorkshire terrier, was donated to Hearing Dogs by a long-term supporter of the charity. Like all hearing dogs, Reggie spent time in socialisation with a volunteer family, where he learned basic obedience and was introduced to lots of people and experiences. This stood him in good stead for his advanced soundwork training at the Charity’s northern training centre in Yorkshire, where he learned to alert his trainer to various sounds such as the door bell, cooker timer and smoke alarm.

Now Reggie is making a big difference to Christine’s life – alerting her to sounds that she would otherwise miss. At the end of January he had his final assessment and achieved his fully qualified hearing dog status, so now he has been issued with an identity card by the Chartered Institute for Environmental Health. This documentation proves his assistance dog status and gives him right of access to all public places under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).