The truth is that the dog has excellent hearing, in fact dogs can identify the car that you drive from up to a mile away. Which means that if somebody is at home then they can put the kettle on!!
It has been written that dogs hearing is 4 times more acute than ours, a somewhat misleading statement because the truth is that dogs can hear sounds from 4 times the distance that we can but both we and our canine companions hear notes in broadly similar fashion. Dogs, however, are better at detecting higher notes.
Your cat can do even better than that because it’s hearing is even more acute. Research shows that dogs can locate the source of a sound in six hundredths of a second. A dog might use one ear to locate the sound and then both ears to catch the maximum number of radio waves. All this is possible because dogs are able to move their ears to accommodate sound, as do cats.

Certain dogs will have will have better ability than others. For instance those who’s ears are erect such as German Shepherds will have a more acute ability to hear over longer distances, whereas dogs like spaniels, who have drop ears have a slightly reduced range.
Cats hearing is so good that it can hear a mouse moving through the undergrowth at distance of up to nearly 10 metres. It’s no wonder then that cats are so proficient at controlling vermin.

Finally today I offer you a totally irrelevant fact that you may try and get it into the conversation at your next dinner party.
I must admit that I thought that the animal with the best hearing in the world was an elephant but I was wrong, it appears that the the creature with the top hearing is called the Greater wax moth. We learn something every day.

I am indebted to Dr Bruce Fogle. M.B.E.  D.V.M. . M.R.C.V.S. For the
technical information contained in this article

R

Dogs have a way of finding people who need them, filling an emptiness that we didn’t know we had.

Thom Jones