“For over 40 years, Australian Lions Hearing dogs has been providing Australian who are deaf or hard of hearing a set of ‘furry ears free of charge. In 2020, Australian Lions hearing dogs delivered over 650 Australians a professionally trained Hearing Assistance Dog”.
On Wednesday 11th June 2025, at the Rotary club of Burnside meeting we were very happy to meet Sherbet and his trainer James. The training of Lions Hearing dogs is very comprehensive and time is taken before they meet their new owner.
James will train Sherbet from 8 weeks till 12 months. Sherbet will need to learn to identify many different sounds and alert his owner. He is also trained to identify smoke alarms or other dangers. Once he completes 12 months he will go to a foster family until he is ready to meet his owner.
James obviously loves his profession and very passionate about training dogs such as Sherbet.
However it is a very expensive exercise to train the dogs at $440,000 per dog. The organisation relies on public donations as they are not fully funded.
We all loved watching Sherbet sitting a James’s feet so patiently. We were asked not to pat Sherbet which was a hard ask.
James explained that they not only train Hearing dogs but dogs who can identify an owners diabetic state and alert them. They also train dogs for veterans suffering from PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder)’.
Once James finished his interesting and inspiring talk he then took Sherbet’s ‘uniform’ off.
We were all free to give Sherbet a lot of attention and pats which he enjoyed.
Thank you James for explaining the journey for a Australian Lions Hearing dog and for bringing Sherbet in to meet us all.