by Deborah Rubin Fields

Three pairs of eager eyes fix on me as I emerge from my Peugeot in a Jerusalem neighborhood. When assistant director Tracy Van Eek comes down to open the gate of the Ali Hope Foundation, three apricot-colored tails start waving like out-of-control metronomes. As I mount the stairs, the young Lab siblings keep crashing into each other along their fence.

“Look out,” my daughter Orli warns, “when they’re let out of the holding pen, they’ll jump all over you.”

“Jump” is an understatement. If I hadn’t been braced for the onslaught, the frisky youngsters would easily have toppled me. It’s quite a shock, therefore, to learn that these three happy-go-luckies are in training to be very serious service providers.

Each is learning to be a highly specialized work dog. Lev (Hebrew for “heart”), Sol (Spanish for “sun”) and Tara (Greek for “hill”) are all boarding at the Ali Hope Foundation in order to become assistance dogs for Israelis who are both deaf and blind.

There are 1,000 individuals who are both deaf and blind living in Israel. One member of this sensory-challenged community is now broadly smiling at me. Her name is Tamara Meirovich. Amazing as it may seem, she is the dogs’ trainer. 

Tamara, as I soon learn, is remarkable in other ways as well. Besides being Israel’s only authorized deaf-blind dog trainer, she is the director of the new Ali Hope Foundation. In the fall of 2006, Tamara together with Tracy—who is sighted, but deaf—established the Ali Hope Foundation. Voluntarily running the non-profit, they have one goal: improving the lives of Israel’s largely overlooked deaf-blind community.

Multilingual in both speech and sign language

Tamara was born deaf in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1963. At the age of four she entered a pre-school program for deaf children. Early on, her eyesight began to weaken. By age nine, Argentine ophthalmologists diagnosed Tamara’s condition as Usher’s Syndrome. As her eyesight deteriorated gradually, Tamara was able to learn how to read and write in her native tongue, Spanish.

Tamara’s family moved to Israel when she was 12. There Tamara enrolled in another school for the deaf. In her new school, Tamara had to learn to read and write again—this time in Hebrew. She also learned to communicate in Israeli Sign Language.  

Shortly after graduating from high school, Tamara married Yehuda, a man who is deaf. They now have two daughters, both of whom have unimpaired sight and hearing.

While Tamara’s family life has been happy, her early working life was not. Tamara discovered that even though she had studied ceramics, factories did not want to hire her because of her limited vision.

The turning point came in an unexpected way. Tamara, who used a cane for navigating, was one day hit by a car. After she recuperated, she requested a guide dog. This animal gave her tremendous freedom and security.   

Tamara realized that, just as she had benefitted from having a guide dog, other Israelis in her situation could also benefit from such assistance. So, accompanied by an interpreter, Tamara enrolled in a course for guide dog trainers. When Tamara received her certification several years ago, she had put herself on track for eventually training dogs for the deaf-blind community.

With her own assistance dog, Tamara travels each day about an hour and a half by bus and taxi to the Ali Hope Foundation center. She relies almost totally on her dog; she does not hear, and in the daylight she sees almost nothing.

Once inside the center, she dims the lights. She is still able to see the dogs’ light fur against a dark wall and carpet. With the help of a word enlarger, she is able to slowly read anything from a printed document to an SMS (Short Message Service) message. To read from a computer screen, she both enlarges the letters and reverses the color from black on white to white on black.  

Dog Sign Language

Tamara’s instruction to the dogs is markedly different from the instruction generally given to assistance dogs for either the deaf or the blind.  In order to prevent them from becoming accustomed to listening to human voices, the Ali Hope dogs remain at the facility, full time, until placed with their owners. While still very, very young, they’re taught to respond primarily to visual, signed commands. From the time they were cuddly pups, they have been called to attention by finger spelling their names in Israeli Sign Language! 

The training period for deaf-blind assistance dogs is longer than that of other service dogs. It will last approximately two years.
Although the compactness of the center keeps the dogs in close physical proximity, Tamara works with each dog individually. The dogs have mastered several (visual) signed commands including:

• “Sit,” which consists of Tamara holding up her index finger, middle finger and ring finger to form the Hebrew letter ש (pronounced shin), the first letter in the Hebrew word shave or “sit.” 

•  “Lie down,” which entails Tamara making a fist with her knuckles to form a horizontal line and her thumb held at right angle to the fist.  This sign stands for the Hebrew letter א (pronounced aleph), the first letter in the Hebrew word artza or “toward the ground.”

• “Stop,” which requires that Tamara partially bend her index and middle fingers to make the sign of the Hebrew letter ע (pronounced ayin), the first letter in the Hebrew word atzor or “stop.” While many dogs need lots of reinforcement to master stopping and remaining in place, these three dogs have mastered the command.  

Tamara claps her hands and tries again when the dogs get distracted. On and off, throughout the day, Tamara drills the dogs for periods of 10 to 15 minutes. In order to familiarize the dogs with different people, Tamara has also been having my daughter Orli handle the dogs.

Well-deserved Praise

When the dogs follow through with their commands, Tamara praises them. She mouths the words kelev-tov or Hebrew for “good dog.” Correct behavior is further reinforced either with a warm pat on the head, a biscuit, or a drink of water. If Tamara is displeased with the dogs, she gives them some “time-out” in their individual kennels.

As the dogs mature, Tamara will teach them to respond to aural stimuli. For example, the dogs will learn to recognize and alert their owner to a ringing doorbell or to a knock at the door.

The dogs will also learn sounds that are particular to the home or work situation of their future owners. Thus, if one of the dogs will ultimately be placed with a family that has young children, the dog will learn to respond to the sound of a baby crying or to the sound of a child calling “mommy.” The dogs will notify the owners by nudging them, and then leading them to the sound source. 

In addition, the dogs might learn to “zero in” on sounds that (for better or worse) are unique to Israel. For instance, if the army sounds the alarm for a pending rocket attack, a dog could help get its deaf-blind owner out of harm’s way. So too, the dogs might learn to focus on the siren that announces the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath or the beginning of a Jewish religious holiday.

Eventually, the dogs will become adept at reacting simultaneously to visual and auditory cues. Tamara demonstrates how this works with her own dog, aptly named Hope. In the kitchen, Tamara begins working at the counter. Suddenly, she drops her dish rag. Hope (true to her breed) jumps up to retrieve it. Tamara drops increasingly smaller objects, until—astonishingly—her dog picks up and returns Tamara’s dropped toothpick!  

Tamara has been working with Lev, Sol and Tara for about a year, but she already admits that it will be hard to part with these three animals. Yet she knows better than anyone else just how much a specially trained dog is capable of improving a multi-sensory challenged person’s life.

Lev, Sol and Tara will be the eyes, ears, and constant companions of three deserving individuals. In their special way, Tamara, Tracy and the three Labs of Ali Hope are doing a mitzvah (a good deed) that most of us in the hearing and sighted world can only dream of fulfilling.

Deborah Rubin Fields is a freelance writer living in Jerusalem.

If you would like to learn more about the Ali Hope Foundation, visit www.alihope.com.