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Hearing Dogs

"All research on hearing seems to hone in on two basic facts: 1) if there is a channel of information available, all living things will use it. 2) Sound is everywhere there is life (and other places). Anywhere there is matter and energy, there is a vibration, and any vibration can pass information to a reciever. 

There is a wide range of vibrations perceivavle by living things, from the thud of a footstep that shuts up a chorus of frogs to the incredibly high frequency natural ultrasound of dolphins.  All vibrations require a sensory system that is thousands times faster that its evolutionary cousins, vision, smell and taste.  It is this faster-than-tought auditory speed, with a wide range of tones and timbres that visual color can not hope to match and greater flexibility than the chemical sensitivities of taste and smell, that lets sound underlie and drive a fantastsic range of subconcious elements in the living organism. Combined with wildly divergent ways of listening by different species and the increasely complex ways of using information by living things, the presence of sound may drive the evolution developement and day-to-day function of the mind.  ALL animals with a backbone can HEAR. It's the most universal of all the senses."
                                         -------Seth S. Horowitz Ph.D. "The Universal Sense, How Hearing Shapes the Mind"

Yes but, what if you can't hear so well? Or at all? Can a dog really "hear" for you?