Martha Hoffman, BA

Martha Hoffman, BA in Biology, University of California at Santa Cruz. Having pined for a dog during her whole childhood, Martha Hoffman finally got a Yorkie in 1979. She enjoyed teaching her Yorkie every trick she had ever heard about. Martha has been moderately hard of hearing from birth, and uses hearing aids. She had learned of a brand new concept called a “Hearing Dog.” Noticing her dog barking when the phone rang, she tried many ways to teach him to do other alerts. Although she later learned that there were better alerts than barking, Martha soon realized how even normal behaviors of a pet dog can provide a feeling of security in knowing about sounds and situations in and out of the home. As she aged, and lost more hearing, she realized more ways in which a Hearing Dog can be of help. Adding formal sound alerts is an incredible bonus for any Deaf or hard-of-hearing person who loves dogs.

She later landed her dream job: trainer at the Hearing Dog Program in San Francisco, working there for 30 years. She has been involved with the selection, training and placement of over 500 Hearing Dogs and Service Dogs, as well as evaluating and instructing their human partners.

Martha has temperament tested over 20,000 dogs for suitability for this work, and observed the behavior of over 200,000 shelter dogs and puppies. Martha’s book “Lend Me An Ear” received excellent reviews and is considered to be the textbook for understanding Hearing Dog temperament, training, and selection. The temperament testing section applies to Service Dog and pet dog testing as well.

During her time at the Hearing Dog Program, she and the other HDP trainers revolutionized training methods to help dogs gain a conceptual understanding of sound alerting, instead of relying on training complex behavior chains. Dogs trained with these methods continually expanded the dogs’ abilities to alert to new sounds and situations.

Working in a training program has challenges, including funding and high demand for trained dogs. Innovative trainers taught several behaviors at one time, or taught whole concepts. Both led to great improvements in the training process. Another challenge was to teach people to succeed with their new dog. Many clients were people who adored dogs, but perhaps had never owned or trained a dog, perhaps knew English as a second language, perhaps were very elderly, perhaps had learning challenges. One intensive class week had to get them ready to keep up the training, as well as understand how to train any new sounds at home with their new dog, on their own. However, complex training sequences and concepts are not easily transferred. Martha developed illustrations, demonstrations, and techniques to fit many client learning styles.

The graduates also had to be taught how to teach people! They needed to be able to go home and train their families, as well as their new dog! Martha and the trainers invented games and strategies that turned jealous or unmotivated kids and spouses into proud training assistants. Martha successfully tested her people-teaching techniques and dog-training games on the children at the SF-SPCA summer day-camps.

Another result of working for the HDP was that Martha discovered that teaching people was just as rewarding as training dogs. She started as a shy, introverted dog-lover who was obsessively curious about the mysteries of dog behavior. She became a dog trainer whose mission is to find better

ways to teach people to understand dog behavior and training. She enjoys learning from her online students and helping them achieve their goals. Martha has trained her own Hearing Dogs and pet dogs to excel in Service Dog tasks, Hearing Dog alerts, tracking, film, stage, tricks, cancer detection, bedbug detection, herding, and diabetic alerting. She and her pet Belgian Malinois “Jekyll” made US Schutzhund/DVG/IPO teams five times to compete in World Championships in Europe. She has enjoyed competing in AKC Obedience, and her Border Collie Hearing Dog “Jinx” gained Agility titles including winning the overall 1990 USDAA national championship. Martha helped found a Diabetic Alert Dog program, taught at the Bergin University for Canine Studies. She has also given seminars worldwide, and taught online extensively.

Martha is always on the hunt for more information on the expanding field of medical alerting for Service Dogs. Her next goal is to combine her techniques for sound and “Go Get Help” alerting with medical scent/symptom alert training.

Martha teaches the Soundwork courses and co-teaches tiers 1 and 2 of the: Barbara Handelman Service Dog Trainer program.

Martha currently lives on the island of Bali. She enjoys her housemate’s three Pugs, and sees great Hearing Dog potential in one of them!