Dave Talks Dog Hearing Aids with Dr. Peter Scheifele of FETCHLAB

Peter Scheifele, Ph.D., calls in from the University of Cincinnati’s FETCHLAB to discuss how he began studying animal audiology, what humans have learned from animal hearing research, how to know if your pet is deaf, and hearing aids for dogs.

Link to full transcript

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Starkey's Town Bites. I'm your host, Dave Fabry, uh Starkey's chief innovation officer. Our guest is someone I've been excited to chat with for this podcast for some time. Not just because he's a friend of mine, but because he spent time researching hearing loss in man's best friend. Dr. Pete Scheifley has his PhD in animal science and bioacoustics, speech, and hearing science, and he's a professor at the University of Cincinnati. He's the executive director of Fetch Lab, which is an internationally renowned animal hearing and bioacoustics laboratory.

unknown 0:33

Dr.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Pete Scheifley, welcome to the podcast. Dr.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Nice to be here. I'm happy that you were invited me.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Well, of course, but uh I I wish we were sitting face to face, but we'll have to handle this in in the manner that we're doing so this way, where you're in Cincinnati and I'm here in Minnesota. Um but let's start with the uh from the beginning, really. Um briefly, what is animal audiology?

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Animal audiology is actually something that I dreamed up when I began working at the University of Cincinnati. As a professor, of course, we are all required to do research, and everybody has their own individual uh desires. Uh and my primary department is in audiology at the University of Cincinnati, uh, but also then I work with the medical school in neurology and uh and such. And so having had an animal background, not only uh with my degree in animal sciences, but also with the Navy, I um decided that I would really like to expand audiology into the veterinary community. And my thought was pretty simple. It was if an audiologist can work side by side with an ENT, then why can they not work side by side with a veterinarian? And since audiologists, now with our AUDs, have the expert knowledge of audiology, it should be able to be applied to uh an array of animals. The canine area came first because in the United States today there are 80 breeds of dogs that suffer congenital deafness. And uh that started out pretty much with Dalmatians. I think when uh 101 Dalmatians came out, they were very popular. And unfortunately, over time with the breeding, uh congenital deafness is showing up as one of the primary uh uh impacts to that particular breed. So that at this day in time, one out of every five Dalmatians will be born congenitally deaf. And so now uh the breeders of all the different breeds uh are gathering together with the veterinary community. Uh, and I think Dr. George Strain at Louisiana State University is kind of the starter of all this to uh try to do audiological testing for congenital deafness, what what audiologists would call an ABR or we call a bear test, um, to find out if puppies are deaf, so that uh a non-deaf purebred puppy could be registered with the American Kennel Club. And so that's kind of what started the Fetch Lab.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

So are you saying that AKC, the American Kennel Club, if one of those puppies, unfortunately, like a Dalmatian, happens to have profound hearing loss, they won't register them with AKC as a purebred?

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Yes, they're not considered to be, they're considered to be altered, which is a kind of a bad word to use, but uh but yeah, the the the dog needs to be um wholesome and complete in its health. And so uh that's kind of the way things are looked at. So the orthopedic foundation for animals turns out to be the keepers of all of the congenital testing that's done on any puppy uh from 35 weeks old to about 12 weeks old. And so that is where the archives are for all the testing. So when we test puppies, uh the owner breeder is responsible to if they want the puppies to be registered, they're responsible to send the bear test results to OFA, which archives them uh and and then they go on from there. As a result of that, um the Army Research Office approached me uh being some uh ex-military operations guy um and said, we're having some issues with our dogs. Uh one of the issues that came up right away was that uh handlers were finding out that if they were on a long helicopter ride uh to a landing zone, uh everybody in the helicopter is is wearing hearing protection, uh except the dog.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Except the dog, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

So and and handlers have tried over the years various different things. Most of the dogs we use are Belgian Malinois. And so it's a shepherd-like dog. They'll try bringing the ear flap down or putting cotton in the dog's ears or whatever like that. But the dog seemed to be coming out of the chopper um a little bit confused and not taking verbal commands. And so um I wound up showing by testing a number of dogs in the helicopter that uh that um the dog was not selectively ignoring the handler, the dog could not hear the handler because it had a significant threshold shift after a 30-minute or longer ride in the helicopter with no hearing protection. As a result of that, and because of my past military, I kind of got drawn back into it again. And so um we became responsible for uh multipurpose canines and doing hearing protection and developing hearing protection and actually working with and training the veterinarians of the Army to um conduct bear tests.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

So I said, Well, that background was just it's fascinating to think about uh that and and how this pathway led you to that. You talked briefly about your experience in the military, your animal science background, which we share. I started as an animal science undergrad.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Really?

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Yep, back in college. I was first in my family to go to college, and when I off came off uh to the University of Minnesota as a freshman, I was an animal science major and only found my way through audiology, to audiology rather, through a lab uh that W. Dixon Ward and David Nelson shared, where we were working on damage risk criteria for noise exposure. And as you know, uh a lot of what we know about hearing really dates back to George von Bekeshi's work, uh where he uh he won the Nobel Prize in hearing. Uh, and a lot of that work was based on animal models. And uh a lot of the work that Dix Ward and many others around the world have done uh and I got to participate in is uh based on chinchillas or guinea pigs. And so so much of what we know about human hearing is based on uh work that was based uh on animal research. And and uh and so I uh it's one of the reasons I just love uh the path that you've taken because it is really based on uh not people just think, oh, you know, that that's a cute hobby. But but you think about the the the depth of this uh research and the area that you've focused on to not only help some of these service animals, and we'll talk more about that more in a moment, but but really uh that it has helped humanity in terms of our knowledge about noise exposure in humans and about signal processing and things that are found in modern uh hearing aids has been based in many ways on animal research from the past. So, what I'd love for you to do is spend a minute and talk about your hearing journey. And and you highlighted a few things, but uh, when did you first get interested in audiology? A chicken and egg thing. I guess you got interested in audiology first, then were in the military working on canines, but before canines, other animals, and then uh in establishing the Fetch Lab, kind of found your way back through this. But start talk a little bit about what your initial interest was in hearing.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Well, initially um I was uh attending the University of Connecticut to get my PhD. I was in the animal sciences department, so we're brothers in arms there. Uh and uh it turns out that uh I like all PhD candidates, I needed to come up with a thesis and and something I was interested in. And I was all I had always been interested in um canine hearing. So uh I found myself one day over in the uh communication sciences and disorders department, roaming through the hallway, and I ran into this fellow, Frank Music, and uh I began to talk to him and said, you know, I'm in I'm kind of interested in uh in uh uh in animal hearing and audiology. And so uh his he countered back with uh well, what do you what do you want to do? You know, I'm not an animal scientist, but um he said, you know, what what is your interest? And at that time, my interest was, and this is what I did my PhD dissertation on, was the Lombard response in beluga whales.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Crazy. And yeah, um, and and I did that because it happened for for those who might be uninitiated, can you give a high-level explanation? Everyone knows a beluga whale, but can you give a high-level explanation of what the Lombard effect is?

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Sure. So the Lombard effect, sometimes known to people as the cocktail party effect, uh, is a reflex that we have, whereupon, if you are uh speaking and the noise floor that your environment that you're in raises up, your voice will automatically raise up to meet that uh noise floor for intelligibility purposes. And this happens to be a reflex that we have. And it turns out that many, only a few animals had been known at that time to have a Lombard reflex. Uh, some uh tamarinds and other types of monkeys and whatever. But because of the work that I was doing in the Navy, I was very much into working with marine mammals at the time. And the bulk of the work that I was doing was up in the St. Lawrence River estuary where all of the shipping comes into the St. Lawrence River to head up to the Great Lakes. And so I was working uh with the Canadian government and and the whale center up there called the Group for uh education of marine mammals. Uh, and so um I told this to Frank, and I said, Well, I don't know anything about, I don't even know what a Lombard response is. And so he said, Well, you you need to find out. We're gonna, and so we started to work together and fashioned out my my dissertation thesis that that ultimately showed that yes, beluga whales in the wild do have a lombard response. Um and so uh that went back to the military, and the military responded by coming back and saying, Well, you need to uh you need to come do some stuff for us. Uh so it turns out that I um I actually uh retired with 22 years in the military in uh 1992. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Oh, you're welcome.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

And uh and it and then I got a visit in 2014 from a fellow from the Naval Investigative Service who said, we are uh reinstating your clearance and we need you to come back and do some work for us. So welcome back. So um uh that's when I started to actually do work with uh with canines because the Army Research Office approached me. And so it has gone on since then uh to uh uh to not only the Army but working dogs. Uh Fetch Lab, I'm also responsible for testing uh Cincinnati SWAT dogs, uh dogs that are exposed to either gunfire or explosives or whatever, uh high noise regimes. But we also do a lot of work with exotic animals at zoos. Um my wife's degree is in exotic animal training and zoo management. And so uh we use those together to um to do things such as uh we do a lot of sound work uh to protect the animals at thing places like uh Georgia Aquarium, the Mystic Aquarium, the Newport Aquarium. Uh and so that's how things, that's how things started, went on. Uh uh, you know, Frank got me into the whole thing, and that made me then uh make my PhD go partially animal science and partially um speech and hearing sciences. So here I am with, you know, with all of this in the in the in the background.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

It's amazing. I mean, Frank's influence um has been so profound on this field, and I didn't realize uh that he had also served as a mentor to you. And uh and but it's it doesn't surprise me given his uh knowledge base and and his uh array and breadth of interest. So when you talk about uh I think it's fascinating when you talked about how in the military, when they're bringing some of the dogs along with the teams uh in the helicopter, that everyone was wearing hearing protection except the dogs, um, and then um what other approaches so so you identified that the dogs were suffering from at least a temporary uh shift in their hearing from the ride in this uh noisy helicopter? Um what did and we know from advising people if they're in noisy environments that just stuffing toilet paper in their ears doesn't work. So what did you do to try to protect those working dogs from acquiring a temporary or permanent threshold shift so that when they hit the ground, they could hit the ground uh running and ready to start doing what they're trained to do?

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Well, the Army uh Research Office took that in hand and uh they put out a small business innovation research uh um grant thing uh out for proposals and uh in a company by the name of ZO Zateo Tech and Vodum uh both won that uh but the but uh the SBIR went each to both of those companies with the stipulation so I that I was a consultant on it because of the audiological aspects. Uh from that we actually developed a hearing protection device, a tactical hearing protection device for those dogs, for the special operations dogs. Um and uh and and now they now anybody can get that if they go on to rec specs, they can they can get one. Um but they were originally designed for military dogs that are uh undergoing transportation either in in by vehicle, fixed wing or rotary wing aircraft. Um and so that went a long way towards now uh getting rid of the problem that the handlers had, where dogs would come off the chopper and be confused, not taking verbal commands, that kind of thing like that. So we, you know, we were able to do a good thing with the development of this canine hearing protection device. Um it has now spilled over into other things. Uh lately, uh one of the things that I that they have me working on is is another thing that that I kind of brought up to them when it comes down to uh threshold shifts. And that is that in many bases, these dogs are kenneled, and there are quite a few dogs in the kennel. Kennels uh for over the years and to this present day are built to be clean, not to be acoustically correct. Right. And so constantly what you're looking at are dogs that are in a concrete kennel with a concrete floor and concrete walls and so on and so on. And so many times, you know, I mean the noise levels go up and down during the day, but typically during the during the day proper, and especially at feeding time, um, those noise levels in those kennels can be as high as 110 dBA.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Yeah. And so, you know, which is a damaging level for humans and for animals absolutely when when they're in a sustained exposure. And as you say, when the dogs know they're going to be getting fed, they're gonna start barking. So those levels, I'm surprised, they're not even louder.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Yep. Uh I mean, and it when when I go and do a kennel noise mitigation, which is now what they have me working on, because now everybody's concerned, you know, that I brought up the fact that if you are starting off your day as a handler, taking your dog out of a kennel that he's been in for 24 hours, and the noise levels have been very high, then that dog is already starting at a deficit with a threshold shift. Now, if you take him out and start putting him on the gun range or whatever, you are adding to that. Um, and and again, this is for for for those of us in audiology, this is pretty common stuff. You you get this, but this is not the kind of thing that that the average person and certainly not the military, um, even think about. Uh, so so that now, you know, now the now the latest, like I say, the latest thing that they have me working on is mitigating kennel noise and kind of rewriting the design for military kennels that will allow the dogs to be more calm because they're not subjected to the noise, they're not having a threshold shift at the beginning of the day, and so on and so forth. And and you would know this very well. Anyone that does audiology knows this very well. I think, in large part of this, uh when it comes down even to humans, you know, audiology and worrying about your hearing doesn't appear at the top of the pile. It certainly doesn't appear, you know, at the level of uh of heart disease and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

It's taken for granted until it's lost.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

It is. And and you know, I and I see this a lot even with the the people that come with their puppies or dog or people that come with their dogs that are older and say, I don't think my dog is hearing, you know, I come home and I walk over him and he doesn't wake up. And um, is that, you know, as we know, but but people don't think about um hearing loss is not like a broken bone. It's not like a cut, nothing hurts, it's nothing mechanical. And so we don't think about it. And so typically what I'll get is a person that comes in on Fridays is when we hold our our uh our lab or clinic for puppies and people that have dogs that they think can't hear. Um, is that this has been happening over a long period of time, just like it does with a human, but there's no pain involved in it. So people don't even know that it's happening. And typically I'll get a person that will come in and say, I have this dog, and I think the dog can't hear, you know, for one reason or another. It's not reacting, there's no behavioral reaction or whatever. And uh, and they'll say, you know, it suddenly lost its hearing. And you know, and I say, no, probably it didn't suddenly lose its hearing. This has probably been going on for some time, and it has been losing its hearing, but you have not noticed the symptoms, and consequently, you're now at the point where, yes, your dog, in fact, if we run a bear test, find out that the dog uh, you know, has lost its hearing.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

So it does sound alike. That it is just insidious coming on over many years. And I do want to explore that, just uh sorry to interrupt you, but um when you talk about in the military application where the work that you've done has identified importantly uh that the dog, if they're not protecting their hearing the same way the human, their human counterpart is when they're on an airplane or in a Humvee, um, that they're not ready to go to work as soon as they get to where they're going. So you've been able to help mitigate that. Have you also helped increase or make their service like their service years, their working years longer as a result of this by preventing them from being exposed unnecessarily to loud sounds in transport? Have you lengthened their careers, if you will, by uh the unwanted high noise levels?

SPEAKER_01 21:42

Absolutely. Um, and that's one of the things that I was able to portray um to the Army Research Office and some of the higher level people uh in the military is that you're extending the working life of this dog uh so that you're not having to constantly replace dogs into military um and so as a result of that i mean that that is not only good from the point of view of the health of the dog yeah uh but the and but if you're gonna be you know a suit a a higher uh higher level person you're you're also saving money because you're not putting money into having to constantly replace the dogs in that you're using but i think even more important than that is uh that we realize now that that military canines uh dogs that are working with you know police like SWAT teams and things like that they are really uh protecting the people a military working dog that goes out with a platoon yeah is really protecting every man and woman in that platoon for sure so if that dog is not hearing if the dog has a deficit not only is the dog at a disadvantage but it's putting every member of that platoon at a disadvantage if it goes into a firefight or whatever happens to to happen or a policeman. So by having these dogs have good hearing you are not only protecting the dog but you're protecting the people who rely on that dog for doing its job.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

No question. So yes no question. And let's segue into civilian life then I can imagine for service dogs for those with poor vision, you know seeing eye dogs as they were historically called or hearing dogs being able to again extend the service life of those dogs. I mean I can only imagine I I have some rough idea how much it costs to train those dogs for uh as service dogs and to be able to uh lengthen their years of service uh by preventing them from unnecessary exposure as well as hunting dogs I know they're as well very expensive to train and to try to prevent their hearing from uh unnecessary exposure do you do work in the civilian areas as well with with these types of animals?

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Yes um and in fact here in in Cincinnati um once a year just before Christmas uh we have a veterinarian who has for years uh hosted what we call canine core and that is a day that is set aside where a whole group of veterinarians whether they're people that are doing dental or osteology or whatever including Fetch Lab get together and as a community service we test all of the Cincinnati police dogs the SWAT dogs uh the uh search and rescue dogs cadaver dogs they uh and they all get all their testing including audiology and they get it done for free so that we know that these dogs go back out that year and we have a baseline for them. We know that their hearing is okay we know their health is okay uh so yes as as an aside to that though um I would say that out of every 100 dogs that I test on a Friday in the lab, uh roughly a third of those dogs are not puppies, but they are dogs that are being brought in by their owner either because the dog is 12 or 13 or 14 years old and has presbycusis or whatever the case may be. Aging of the ear.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Yeah and so and and so uh yes we are we are serving everybody.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Everybody's going next because you know I've had some dogs that have lived to be uh 15, 16 years as their diets improve and uh and we exercise them more I always say that the best thing about the dog is they're they're absolutely human's best friend, but the hardest part is that they just don't live long enough. And we want them to have the best quality of life throughout their entire life. So I I do want to segue into that as well to talk a little bit about have you attempted and conducted not only assessments but fitting with uh canines uh with hearing aids yes and and and I'm uh before I answer that I want to say one more thing that I think is important.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

In this day and age uh not every veterinarian uh knows how to do a bear test to test dog hearing uh moreover many of them don't have the equipment to be able to to do electrophysiological testing uh and so um veterinary neurologists and veterinary general veterinarians uh certainly could run a test but what what I where I think Fetch Lab comes in is that my belief is that if you're a veterinarian you practice veterinary medicine and you should just like an MD you practice you know medicine and and you should that's your expertise. But when it comes to expertise in audiology we have doctors of audiology and my belief is that we should let them do their job. If they are properly trained to work with a veterinarian then they should do that because they understand the analysis they understand the whys and wherefores which you know when I was in when I went to medical school they only give and even here at Cincinnati we only give one lecture on audiology and basically you know it's you know using a tuning fork on a person to do a you know a a basic test that you can do in an office and then basically it's go talk to your audiologist or your speech pathologist. And so there's no time to add the the amount of audiology that needs to be done into a medical or veterinary curriculum. There just isn't the time for it. But we don't need to do that because we have audiologists that are that are doctors of audiology and so my belief is this is this is what needs to be done. Now having said that in answer to the to the next topic that we're talking about uh and when I started doing testing here and started Fetch Lab it turns out that uh that I owned a dog with my wife and this dog uh was doing a lot of television work so he was on animal channel animal planet and things like that. But as the dog got into his 12th or 13th year he was losing his hearing we noticed and he was not able he was very confounded by off-camera verbal cues and things like that. So this was the first dog that I got uh with uh with my colleague John Clark at the university here and said uh why don't we try to put a hearing aid on this dog and so we did uh we we got some uh BTE some behind the ear hearing aids and we fashioned out a special cape for this dog to wear where the hearing aids were on the cape velcroid on and the tubes went and and because this dog was highly trained it was easy to for uh my wife who is the trainer and behaviorist to work with him to accept the hearing aid now when I talk to people about hearing aids and I get people every month that are asking me could you put hearing aids on my dogs uh is that can we do it? Yes we can uh the problem is is that uh well there's a lot of problems one of them is the cost which we can talk about in a little while but the other one is is that if you're gonna put a hearing aid on your dog it requires a commitment to training that dog because dog does not want to have something in his ear. So it takes a commitment to train and even if you train the dog to accept it there is no guarantee that the dog will ever acknowledge the fact that that hearing aid is doing anything different for him than any other time in his life other than having something in his ear. It turns out with this first dog that after you know a month of training uh we used to get home and my two kids and my wife and I would get one of those horns that you want a mo on a bicycle that you can and we'd sit in four corners you know of the room and and then beep and see if he would acknowledge and go to the beep. Well one night one of my kids you know beeped the horn and you could see him stop and sort of recognize that whoa something just happened and he localized it and went to where that sound came from. So that was our test to say well yeah he good he gets it uh the hearing aid works in in the rest of his lifetime which amounted to another year and a half or two years um he wore his cape with his hearing aids every day uh and and so he was the first of nine dogs that to date I have put hearing aids on.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

And so all of them, are they all wearing ones that go behind the ear? Because the additional complication that I can think of immediately is that you know they can move their ears and some breeds more than others and then some that have ears that flop down over their external auditory canal. Have you tried custom devices? Now I know there's channel challenges with that too because their canals are very tortuous very curvy but but have you always done the behind the ear style or have you tried other styles as well?

SPEAKER_01 31:58

No we have tried other styles um and you're right because the dog had the dog's ear canal has a vertical section and a horizontal section. We used the BTEs the behind the ears at first the one of the last dogs that I put a hearing aid on was a dog that belonged to a veterinarian in Austin Texas and the dog was also a search and rescue dog. And so we used a wireless hearing aid so that the power pack was on the collar and then the hearing aid didn't need to have you know that that uh tube. And as far as I know to this date unless the dog has passed by now um that dog again got it and and where's the wireless hearing aid so now we haven't done a whole lot more with it only because um of of time and funding but I I am continuously asked to please please please develop a canine hearing aid however you you're you've you made hearing aid technology advanced so far but there's a lot of things that in a hearing aid that we put on humans for them for their daily lives that are irrelevant to the dog. The dog doesn't need you know you know heart rate and things like that. You know and so what people who maybe not yet maybe not yet you know we might we might uh think of a way that that might add value too it it could ask veterinary value yes um but what I'm being constantly asked right now is is can we start out by getting a hearing aid which is specifically made for canines that only has the technologies in it that a dog is going to need and not and and it might not be not now talk not now talking about police or or uh military because honestly if a dog is losing its hearing to the point that it needs a hearing aid the military and the police are not going to use that and neither will neither will guide dogs to the blind because you know you it's it's a risk. But pet owners that's what and Dave I have I can't even begin to tell you in the last year I've had people from Paris France from Russia uh from Spain from Italy all asking me get a hold of me that via the internet and say can you put a hearing aid on my dog and so we need to come up with something that is going to be useful for the dogs. And as you say you know technology will be what it will who knows what's going to happen down the line but we don't even have a basic hearing aid that an animal could use right now to extend its life uh and and so the the question becomes what well what exactly does a dog need to hear right that's what I like to talk briefly about yeah and the the answer is for the for the typical uh community of of of pet owners all they want is to say can my dog hear me call when the dog's outside and I call him back can he hear the the you know the dinner dish can hear household noises that the dog needs to hear to survive and I tell these people two things typically an email to me to put a hearing aid on a dog usually starts out with something that says my dog is losing its hearing and uh maybe it also has cataracts or whatever like that. And um and so I'd like to get a hearing aid for my dog um to enhance its quality of life. And so my response to that is two things. I tell them first of all the mere fact that you are contacting me to take the time and money to put a hearing aid on your dog tells me that your dog has a good quality of life. You are a good pet owner okay now and and secondly you have to understand that a dog's primary sense is not hearing the dog's primary sense is old faction smell and so you know why haven't people thought about hearing aids in the past well because if the dog has its sense of smell it's probably going to do just fine around your house you start to get out into hunting and things like that and and you know and and working dogs and stuff and now things change a little bit so the question is can we develop a reasonably uh useful and not quite as expensive hearing aid specifically for canines uh and so it turns out that this is a big thing it's a big need people people want this for their dogs um and in the sense of some of the working dogs like like search and rescue and stuff this is a kind of thing that is absolutely needed uh and so that's why we have taken to to uh be where we are and trying to say can we pursue this can we actually do this?

SPEAKER_00 37:14

Yeah I think you know even thinking about the signal processing differences for canines than for humans in terms of the frequency response the range of hearing that dogs have at least when they start out is is a little different than for humans. But then as you said for what the need is for most humans is to have dogs hear within that audible range for us and to hear the types of sounds in the environment that they can pick up really I mean their ears are like like for humans. Their ears are sensors the same as their olfaction is and their vision is and putting that all together can improve the quality of life. And so we'll stay tuned for that on the rehabilitative side. I want to go back to a comment earlier that you were making about you know the the working maybe another career opportunity for audiologists who are interested in animal health and animal audiology is really to look at the electrophysiological measures. You mentioned the auditory brain stem response and for those who aren't familiar with that it's putting electrodes on and measuring brain signals in response to sounds I I presume autoacoustic emissions can be used on dogs as an objective measure, the same as they can for humans. Every baby is tested with a first level screener is autoacoustic emissions just with a a sound that is putting a sound into the ear and then measuring an echo back from the ear. Do you also provide additional training for those audiologists who are interested in moving into this area in a certification if you will so that then in their area if they wanted to work with veterinarians or with populations of in the civilian population for people who want to extend their their dog's quality of life and and healthy hearing do you offer that through FetchLab?

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Yes I I am very grateful to the University of Cincinnati in that I has as part of FetchLab have uh created a graduate certificate in animal audiology which can only be gotten if you are a practicing licensed audiologist or an AUD student. And in and in to get that certification there is there are practicum hours just like there are in in the clinic for uh for for uh humans um they also uh have to attend a number of classes and these classes since the audiologists already know the audiology yeah the classes that they have to get go through to get the certification are more oriented towards okay you're not dealing with a human you're dealing with an animal now uh and so there's uh there are some things that are veterinary that go into courses such as how do you restrain a dog uh uh if you're going to do a test and uh and covering a wide variety of animals and biology to get them to understand the biological animal aspect as opposed to a human and I have to say that one of the things that has come to me and I've heard my students say this over and over again and it is something that I thought of when I opened FET's lab is you know when I see our our our our people in clinic the students go into clinic and they're learning they have a preceptor or whatever like that and they're going to run an ABR. And so running an ABR with a human there's so much data on humans you sort of know what to what you want to expect. You go from A to Z and you you know what you should be getting and then you you know although pick peak picking is always kind of a little bit tenuous but um but now all of a sudden I get my AUD students and they become in Fetch lab and now they have a dog on the table. Well now they run an ABR a bear test and all bets are off. They don't know what they don't know what what to look for they don't know what what the waveforms are supposed to look like. They don't know when they're supposed to happen so so they find out very quickly that if I have to go and do an ABR on an animal first of all I have to be really expertly know my equipment what is my equipment lineup what is it going to do if I do something wrong what can I expect uh and then working through many many puppy screenings and everything starting to learn oh this is what it looks like because there are no universally accepted norms right in the veterinary community for for this so um so it it's a it's an eye opener for them it's not like going into the clinic with the preceptor and running on and yes we do typically if we're doing a puppy we just do the ABR sure because that's what's what what's required. If we have an older dog we usually run a DPOAE a distortion product emissions distortion product yep the bear test uh and then sometimes we'll even run wide band emittance.

SPEAKER_00 42:29

And presumably maybe for some of those really intelligent dogs like mine who's a sheep who we could train him to raise his paw when he heard a sound coming through there. No. So so these are all objective measures. The closest parallel for those audiologists who might be listening is probably for those who are specialized in pediatric audiologists because you're not getting the responses back. There probably are some nonverbals you can pick up from as you mentioned for your dog that you had that that you could tell they're attending to something but but a lot of that I presume is going into the training and certification for Fetch Lab. And for those again who want either audiologists or pet owners who want more information on exactly what Fetch Lab is F-E-T-C-H-L-A-B lab presumably they can go to your your website and find more information if they're interested like I am in uh uh pursuing this certification so that uh I can continue to pursue my passion as an animal lover in addition to the audiology space. But uh I mean it's just fascinating and um I I could go on all day about this topic. I but I see we're running out of time and the time has flown by. But can you give me a couple tips for pet owners who might be listening for people who might be concerned that their dog may have a hearing loss, things to attend to, things they might notice from your experience in those many people who are contacting you Thinking that their dog has a hearing loss, and other things that they could do in lieu of a hearing aid, which, as you said, there are opportunities but challenges for fitting dogs with hearing aids. Any tips for pet owners who suspect that their dog and their hearing isn't as acute as it once was?

SPEAKER_01 44:16

Sure. I think that there are some symptomatic things that the average pet owner uh can see, but we usually don't see it because we're not we're not attending to them. Uh as a dog starts to lose its hearing, of course, there'll be there'll be times when you call the dog and maybe and it doesn't hear you, it doesn't come. If the if the as the as the hearing gets worse, you know, they'll fall asleep and you they'll not not even realize you're there. We see some typical behaviors. When a dog, a pet owner dog, starts to lose and is losing its hearing, one of the things that the dogs will do is if they're with the family, they will lay across a doorway. And they do that because they need to know where their people are or somebody's leaving the room. That's one of the symptoms that they'll start to do that is kind of their they're trying to accommodate what's going on. But being observant to uh to dog behavior, uh not attending what people think as selective deafness is is a is a big thing. Uh and and and symptoms like that, laying where where they can, or laying next to where they're touching you to be so that they know when you're moving and and going someplace. Uh what I tail to guard against is people, and then and in the veterinary community, this was done for a long time. Uh is you know, people will jangle keys or something like that to see if the dog can hear. And so there are two things about that. Obviously, if you do it in and you're in the same room as the dog, you know, if the dog can see you, then all bets are off. There's no, it's not a test. Um, even if you if the dog couldn't see you, dogs are tend tend to be very, very uh acutely aware of any kind of vibration. So I have people that you know that have come to test and we tell them the dog can't hear. And then, you know, a day later they'll email me and say, Well, we were watching TV and I sneezed or I coughed, and my dog, you know, responded to it. Well, of course he did, but he's not responding to hearing, he's responding to the vibration that he can feel by that. So that's not a good test. Um, and as and as most audiologists know, um uh electrophysiological testing, ABR, is not a true test of hearing.

unknown 46:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 46:34

And you were bringing this thing up about the dog raising its paw. Well, you know, when we test exotic animals at zoos like polar bears and elephants and stuff, we do behavioral testing.

SPEAKER_00 46:46

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

But it's usually done like with the elephant. Uh, if the elephant stands and undergoes the test, uh, if he can hear something, he indicates it either by a paddle or something like that and gets a reward for that. Now it takes an enormous amount of time to go through all the frequencies and everything with rewards, but typically over the years, Hefner and Hefner have done this uh as behavioral testing for a myriad of animals. And in fact, the first guy to put hearing aids on was uh uh on a dog and he gave it up was uh a fellow that was a professor at Auburn University way back in the 80s. Uh, but I think that what happened is well, he retired, but also I think he found that um at that time there wasn't a big call for it, and it's not easy to do.

SPEAKER_00 47:34

You know, if we I would not want to be on the other end of working with a polar bear and accusing it of faking a hearing loss. Uh I do not want to be on the other side of that. But I don't want to take a watch. I have to come in for a visit and see some of this if uh if I have that opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 47:51

I I would tell you this, I don't want to take up a lot of time, but this is a cute, quick story. Um, when I was head trainer at Mystic Aquarium, at night we would take an animal offline, one of the dolphins, and we would work with them. We were doing some navy work. And so um we also so we we're gonna do a behavioral test. And the behavioral test was we have underwater speakers, and so it's connected to a computer, and so we tell we put eye cups on the animal, we send it down, and then somebody presses the button and a tone goes out, a hydrophone. And if the animal hears it, she comes up and depresses a paddle. Well, marine mammals are and specifically dolphins are very, very perceptive. So here's what happened the first night we did it, it worked out really well. We did probably five or six trials, everything worked well. But on the second night when we came back, the animal had our number. And what would happen is I'd put the eye cups on the animal, and she would automatically leave and go down and not even listen, come back up and depress the paddle. Why? Because I'm gonna get a free fish, right? So it's like now you have to worry about you know behavioral bias in the whole thing and everything like that. We were even testing um uh the dolphin's ability to um, with eye cups on, to go 90 meters away in the pool and uh and detect uh a six-inch polypropylene ring and get it and bring it back. And when we started to do that, it was working fine. We we even put a hydrophone on her melon so we could hear the incoming and outgoing pulses for her echolocating. So it worked well for a while. And then all of a sudden, one night I sent her down and she went right out to the object, and there was nothing coming out of the hydrophone. She was not signaling, she was not echolocating. Well, it turns out that the answer to that was we had been putting that that that ring target in the same place every time. After three weeks of doing that, she knew where the target was. She didn't have to echolocate, she'd just go and get it. So, so me saying, Oh, well, I'm Mr. Human, and you know, and I got I got a handle on this, tell my technician, okay, when I put the eye cups on her, I want you to walk around and put the object, the ring in a different part in the pool. And so, lo and behold, we do that. I put the I put the ear cuffs on, and he goes running around and he puts the the thing in the water, and she goes right out to it with no echolocation signal. Now, it confounded us for months, and then we finally figured it out by doing some seismic work. The pool at the main pool at Mystic Aquarium in the theater is built on granite rock, which is what the whole aquarium is built on.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 50:41

I mean, at night I can put a hydrophone in there and hear all the trucks going down I-95 next to the so all she did was she counted his footsteps. I put the icons on and she goes down and she listens to him walk across to where he's going to put the thing. It's it's incredible. I mean, working with exotic animals.

SPEAKER_00 50:59

The acoustic sense of animals and dolphins are is amazing. And uh, I mean, I I love my job, but I really love your job. And uh I I guess, you know, in wrapping up, uh wondered if for the audiologists or audiology students who are listening to you in this with this incredible career you've had, do you have any key learnings or life lessons that you uh uh could impart and for people that might aspire to have uh a similar uh career path or goals or any anything you've learned over the years?

SPEAKER_01 51:33

Well, I have learned uh over the years that we don't give enough credit to a lot of sensation and a lot of things that animals know and can do. And if you stop to think about it, most of what we know about radar and sonar has all come from animals, just as electrophysiological and audiological testing, you know, whether it's a chinchilla or whether it's a bottlenezed dolphin, it doesn't make any difference. And so what I've learned to do is to sit back and listen and watch what can the animal teach me? And uh and I'm finding out that you know what I'm not as a human, I I'm not all I'm not as smart as sometimes as I think I am. Uh and and so uh I I challenge uh you know anybody that is looking for the certificate to say you are in an audiological profession, uh you know, doing a great service for mankind, and and and we certainly need this, and and your technology and everything has come a long way. Help advance the world with animals. If you have animals that are in zoological organizations under professional care, um how do you make how do you make the exhibits? How do you make it safe for them? Moreover, the work that we're doing right now with elephants in South Africa, a lot of that work has to do with protecting those elephants from poachers and from other and protecting the people from elephants raiding their crops because people are living longer and so they're farming. Um, you know, we can do an awful lot for the world uh to that end.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

I couldn't agree more. And uh thank you so much for being with us here today. I'd like to close by uh uh we've started a tradition of saying, you know, uh asking each person maybe um who your what's your favorite song or your favorite sound, uh, and maybe in your case a uh canine or animal-based song or sound uh that is uh a favorite of yours from over the years, given the the importance of hearing. Any anything you can immediately think of?

SPEAKER_01 53:48

Yeah, I think one of the things that I have always liked listening to uh that comes back to me is you haven't lived until you've heard a humpback whale on a submarine sonar. When that whale sings and it comes through, it's like nothing you've ever experienced.

SPEAKER_00 54:10

I and now I'm gonna go out and look on YouTube and see if I can find one. I've heard them uh in uh on a kayak, but not on a sonar sound. And so uh uh I'm gonna go out on a search for that.

SPEAKER_01 54:22

And so if if you want to do that, go to a go to a website called um dosit do s I T E, which is Discovery of Sound in the Sea. And my record my recordings from sonar are on there for various marine mammals. All right, I'm gonna take you up on that.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

I'm gonna take you up on that. Well, Dr. Pete Scheifley, it's been an absolute pleasure to to uh have you uh chat with us today about your experience, and and I know our listeners are gonna enjoy this podcast or this dog cast if there are any canines out there.

SPEAKER_01 54:53

Thanks for inviting me, David, and I look forward to talking with you much more.

SPEAKER_00 54:58

And to our listeners, thank you for listening to this episode of Starky Soundbites. You can learn more about Dr. Stifley's work by Googling Fetch Lab online. That again is F-E-T-C-H-L-A-B. If you enjoyed this conversation, please rate and review Starky Soundbites on your preferred podcast platform. You can also hit subscribe to be sure you don't miss a single episode. We'll see and hear you next time.