Miss-Delectable
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AP Wire - Oregon | kgw.com | News for Oregon and SW Washington
A sign on the front door of Kirk and Stella Dupas' home on Lone Oak Drive tells visitors to ring the door bell twice and then knock hard three times. This will signal their dog to bark and get one of them to answer the door.
Kirk and Stella both have severe hearing loss and without the help of Simba, their 7-year-old cocker spaniel, they would continue to struggle with what most people take for granted.
Simba, whom they also call Skippy, is trained to respond to the activation of the door bell, smoke detector, telephone, oven timer and alarms on the swimming pool and dishwasher. He'll jump up on either Kirk or Stella and then lead one of them to whatever is ringing, buzzing or blaring.
He has also alerted the couple to a leak in the sewer line, a short circuit, a burning lamp shade, and intruders vandalizing their property.
"What makes me feel at ease," Kirk said recently, "is that if he knows something is going on outside, he'll take you over to the window."
Simba was trained by Dogs for the Deaf Inc., an Oregon-based nonprofit organization that trains dogs to respond and alert their owners to household and environmental sounds that are necessary to everyday safety and independence.
Neither Kirk nor Stella is completely deaf, but both have to wear hearing aids and use a variety of devices to help them communicate. They both read lips when people are talking.
Stella, 62, a retired pharmaceutical company clerk who has short gray hair and wears glasses, was born with cerebral palsy and severe hearing loss. She cannot speak clearly, so she communicates to Kirk, who patiently listens to her, reads her lips and her hands when she uses sign language, and then translates what she says.
Kirk, 54, a short bald man with a graying red beard, went through much of his youth not knowing he was hard of hearing and suffered many humiliating experiences.
His hearing loss has become worse as he's aged and today he suffers from Meniere's disease, an inner ear disorder that can affect both hearing and balance. The disorder forced him to retire after 18 years as a school bus driver.
Kirk and Stella, who have been married for 10 years, said they decided it was time to get a hearing dog when they were at a hearing loss convention in Boston in 1998 and the fire alarm activated in the hotel where they were staying. They were supposed to evacuate the building, but neither they nor many of the other people they were with did. They didn't know what had happened until the next morning.
There were times at home as well when a hearing dog would have come in handy. One time, there was a power outage and Kirk panicked when he couldn't find his wife. They also burned one too many meals.
"We had a male cat and when the oven timer would go off, it was so loud, his ears would go back," Kirk said. "He'd whack you with his paw, 'Turn it off!' But by the time he told us, the stuff was burnt."
The inability to fully hear, though, had more serious consequences for both of them. Before they met, they were each the stay-at-home caretaker for one of their elderly, frail parents — Kirk for his mother and Stella for her father.
In each case, the parent collapsed, but neither heard the parent fall. When they realized what happened, they called 911, but neither parent survived and both had to endure severe guilt for feeling it was their fault for not responding quickly enough.
"It just gets to you," Kirk said. "You feel you should should have done something. It takes a long time to come to grips with it."
Actually, that common experience is what connected Kirk and Stella to each other. They met in 1995 in a sign language class. They were both feeling lonely and looking to meet people like themselves.
"You become isolated," Kirk said of dealing with hearing loss. "People don't want you around. You're different and you can't hold conversations."
One day Stella fell and banged her head on her way to class. Kirk subsequently wrote to her to see how she was and the two started going out and developing a rapport. They discovered they knew each other's families. They married in November 1996.ret
A sign on the front door of Kirk and Stella Dupas' home on Lone Oak Drive tells visitors to ring the door bell twice and then knock hard three times. This will signal their dog to bark and get one of them to answer the door.
Kirk and Stella both have severe hearing loss and without the help of Simba, their 7-year-old cocker spaniel, they would continue to struggle with what most people take for granted.
Simba, whom they also call Skippy, is trained to respond to the activation of the door bell, smoke detector, telephone, oven timer and alarms on the swimming pool and dishwasher. He'll jump up on either Kirk or Stella and then lead one of them to whatever is ringing, buzzing or blaring.
He has also alerted the couple to a leak in the sewer line, a short circuit, a burning lamp shade, and intruders vandalizing their property.
"What makes me feel at ease," Kirk said recently, "is that if he knows something is going on outside, he'll take you over to the window."
Simba was trained by Dogs for the Deaf Inc., an Oregon-based nonprofit organization that trains dogs to respond and alert their owners to household and environmental sounds that are necessary to everyday safety and independence.
Neither Kirk nor Stella is completely deaf, but both have to wear hearing aids and use a variety of devices to help them communicate. They both read lips when people are talking.
Stella, 62, a retired pharmaceutical company clerk who has short gray hair and wears glasses, was born with cerebral palsy and severe hearing loss. She cannot speak clearly, so she communicates to Kirk, who patiently listens to her, reads her lips and her hands when she uses sign language, and then translates what she says.
Kirk, 54, a short bald man with a graying red beard, went through much of his youth not knowing he was hard of hearing and suffered many humiliating experiences.
His hearing loss has become worse as he's aged and today he suffers from Meniere's disease, an inner ear disorder that can affect both hearing and balance. The disorder forced him to retire after 18 years as a school bus driver.
Kirk and Stella, who have been married for 10 years, said they decided it was time to get a hearing dog when they were at a hearing loss convention in Boston in 1998 and the fire alarm activated in the hotel where they were staying. They were supposed to evacuate the building, but neither they nor many of the other people they were with did. They didn't know what had happened until the next morning.
There were times at home as well when a hearing dog would have come in handy. One time, there was a power outage and Kirk panicked when he couldn't find his wife. They also burned one too many meals.
"We had a male cat and when the oven timer would go off, it was so loud, his ears would go back," Kirk said. "He'd whack you with his paw, 'Turn it off!' But by the time he told us, the stuff was burnt."
The inability to fully hear, though, had more serious consequences for both of them. Before they met, they were each the stay-at-home caretaker for one of their elderly, frail parents — Kirk for his mother and Stella for her father.
In each case, the parent collapsed, but neither heard the parent fall. When they realized what happened, they called 911, but neither parent survived and both had to endure severe guilt for feeling it was their fault for not responding quickly enough.
"It just gets to you," Kirk said. "You feel you should should have done something. It takes a long time to come to grips with it."
Actually, that common experience is what connected Kirk and Stella to each other. They met in 1995 in a sign language class. They were both feeling lonely and looking to meet people like themselves.
"You become isolated," Kirk said of dealing with hearing loss. "People don't want you around. You're different and you can't hold conversations."
One day Stella fell and banged her head on her way to class. Kirk subsequently wrote to her to see how she was and the two started going out and developing a rapport. They discovered they knew each other's families. They married in November 1996.ret