Teus Tijsseling of Sculpadog NL has founded ‘Stichting Signaalhond'. Sculpadog NL is a special company where they train Search and Rescue dogs, Police dogs, detection dogs, tracking dogs and personal protection dogs for clients. Stichting Signaalhond is an non-profit organization to supply public with information and knowledge to train hearing dogs.

Teus Tijsseling has studied the phenomenon assistance dogs for people with a hearing loss for years and created his own philosophy on the function of hearing dog. Teus Tijsseling himself is deaf and he has trained his Rottweiler Falco as his own personal hearing dog.

Stichting Signaalhonden does believe dogs are of big value for people with a hearing loss. However Teus Tijsseling believes not only the dog has to be trained but new handlers have to learn too. Dogs do need handlers to understand the dog versus human communication to gain best results for their actions. The key aim of Stichting signaalhond is to have new owners train their own hearing dog under supervision of Stichting Signaalhond in group sessions. Handlers come to learn how to read their dogs while training their dogs in special tasks in groups with other assistance dogs for deaf people.

People might think a paradox to have deaf or bad of hearing people train their own assistance dogs. However this is very much possible.

Martha Hoffman from California , USA , is trainer of San Francisco SPCA and involved in training assistance dogs. Martha Hoffman is very bad of hearing who wrote a book about this subject: ‘Lend me an ear'.

Angus McDonald, related with Hearing Dogs in New Zealand, is deaf and is dog-trainer.

Teus Tijsseling , founder of Sculpadog NL and Stichting Signaalhond, is deaf and has trained his own hearing dog.

Corrie Tijsseling , sister of Teus Tijsseling , started training her dog at age 15 months to become hearing dog under supervision of Teus Tijsseling and has seen very good results quickly after purchase of Fanfan. Corrie is deaf.