Suzanne Eich’s office mate can’t fax, file or type. But, according to Eich, her unwavering loyalty, keen attention to detail and staunch work ethic more than compensate for her lack of demonstrable office skills. Give this gal an assignment and she works like a dog.
In fact, she is a dog. She’s Patches, a 9 1/2-year-old purebred Australian shepherd trained as a hearing guide dog. Eich wears hearing aids in both ears and has only a 15 percent hearing capability. Basically, Patches is trained to alert Eich to the sounds that Eich herself can’t hear, such as a doorbell, alarm clock, timer and telephone.
The 33-year-old Gurnee resident is employed at Abbott Laboratories as a software engineer in the pharmaceutical firm’s diagnostic division. Over the last eight years, Patches has become an integral part of Abbott Park’s corporate landscape, accompanying Eich to the office daily and to company meetings when necessary. Because legally she has the same access as a Seeing Eye Dog, she also travels alongside Eich on airplanes during out-of-town business trips.
“I’m an active person, and I like to travel,” said Eich, who recently was featured with Patches on a segment of ABC-TV’s “Prime Time Live.” “I thought it would be nice to have more independence outside of my house. A hearing guide dog spends basically all its time with you, so you’re not limited as to where you can go.”
Eich was born hearing-impaired after her mother, Virginia, contracted rubella during pregnancy. Eich’s parents, who lived in Arlington Heights at the time, enrolled her in a special program through the Northwest Suburban Special Education Association at age 3 so she could learn lip reading and speaking instead of using sign language.
As a result, she was able to attend regular public schools, including Rand Junior High School in Arlington Heights and Buffalo Grove High School, where she was an honors student. She earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science in May 1987 from Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa, and began working at Abbott the following month.
“My parents thought that (lip reading) was the best way for me to learn to communicate and live in the real world,” Eich recalled. “It was a choice my parents made for me that I continued, but it’s not for everyone. People need to do what’s right for them.”
In 1989, Eich bought a town home so she could live independently. But she kept missing her visitors because she couldn’t hear them knocking on her door or ringing her doorbell. “At first I tried building her a louder doorbell,” recalled her father, William, a retired Abbott engineer. “But I knew there had to be another way.”
Through reading, he learned about Okada, a not-for-profit organization in Fontana, Wis., that trains guide dogs for the hearing impaired. Eich said the dogs generally are mixed breeds obtained through local animal shelters. Patches was an exception, given to the organization by a professional breeder when he discovered the dog was blind in one eye.
According to Okada trainer Walt Marsh, the dogs are tested on-site at the shelters to evaluate their temperament and overall potential as hearing guide dogs. “We basically set off different sounds and then watch for the dog’s response,” he said, adding that Okada has successfully matched about 40 dogs with hearing-impaired people since his wife, Pat Putnam-Marsh, founded the organization 11 years ago.
Patches had been returned to Okada by her previous hearing-impaired owner because the two had not bonded. As a result, the dog was trained and available at the time Eich and her parents inquired, so Eich did not have to wait the year it typically takes to train a guide dog. Eich also spent two weeks in training to learn how to handle Patches before taking her home.
Eich was able to fund $2,500 of the $3,000 donation that Okada expected in 1989 to help defray Patches’ training and boarding costs through a grant from her company’s Clara Abbott Foundation, which provides educational and financial assistance to employees and their families. (The expected donation for matching an individual with a guide dog at Okada today has increased to $8,000.)
When the alarm clock rings in the morning, Patches jumps up on Eich’s bed to wake her for work. Eich grooms, feeds and walks the dog before the two leave for the office. At work, Patches performs like any other conscientious employee. If the telephone rings and Eich is away from her desk but not far away, Patches is trained to find her and bring her back to her phone, which is fitted with an amplifier.
The dog also responds to Eich’s first name. “If someone wants to talk to me, they’ll say `Suzanne’ to get her attention,” Eich said. “Then they’ll repeat my name one or two times so she can take me to the source of the sound.”
“Sometimes I’d call Suzanne’s name out as a game just to give Patches something to do,” recalled former co-worker Becky Aldag, who now works as an Abbott account manager in Washington, D.C.
When she’s not working, the dog is well behaved and very unassuming, resting quietly at Eich’s feet or next to her desk. In fact, Eich said, the dog has been trained essentially to ignore people so she can fit into the corporate atmosphere as inconspicuously as possible.
According to Eich’s current supervisor, Milan Pavlica of Kenosha, Wis., having Patches around has not detracted from the professionalism of his department. “People just go about their jobs, and Patches is considered one of the group,” Pavlica said. “She performs her job like everyone else.”
“The dog is really helpful when I’m down the hall and want to get Suzanne’s attention,” said another of Eich’s co-workers, Teri Grossman of Chicago. “And when Suzanne is working on a database, she sometimes won’t have her hearing aid on. The dog lets her know that I’m coming into her cube.”
Patches has even helped Eich’s social life. “She’s an ice breaker,” said Eich, who met the man who would become her husband, Dale Smrz, after the two struck up a conversation over the dog following a meeting. “It was a package deal,” Smrz said. “I bought flowers for Suzie and a dog bone for Patches.” The couple have been married for five years and have a 19-month-old son, Ryan, for whom Patches is like a sibling.
Smrz said Patches is smart enough to know that he can hear. “When I’m home and the phone rings, she looks at me like, `Why don’t you get it?’ But when I’m gone, it’s work as usual.”
