You pay all the bills for the animal's care as every parent does be it four legged or two. It's expensive. I'd love a service dog but frankly not many people can swing the cost. I'd rather just get a dog that needs to be rescued. Service animal or not, they do make like easier.
Laura
Yep I have a rescue dog, an 80 lb German Shepard named Alvin. My friend rescued him as a pup, eventually got 2 other dogs, and had Alvin for about 5-6 years. Sadly my friend passed away last February. The dogs were in their kennels in the house for at least 2 weeks with NO food or water before someone called the Sheriff to do a wellness check on Howie. Sadly one of the dogs passed away right after he got to the shelter. I was going to adopt both the other dogs but his neighbor took one before Alvin could be released from the vet (he was on IV fluids and antibiotics for 2 weeks) he went down to 52 lbs.
He's my baby. My Weimie died before last Christmas I hadh im for 10 1/2 years through a Weimaraner rescue in our state. I've been training Alvin, he gets the door for me, and I'm working on having him wake me up if my flashing and buzzing alarm doesn't wake me up. You can probably train a rescue dog to do a lot of the things needed to help Deaf/HoH, it's very different than blind. The only thing is you can't take them everywhere you can take a service dog and I think that's okay. I LOVE Alvin but he has PTSD from what he went through and is unpredictable around other dogs, he can be aggressive. I would hate to compromise someone's ability to have their service dog in places because Alvin isn't trained for situations like that.
But for everything you need at home a rescue is a great idea!