Personal stories and experiences with deaf puppies and dogs?
I am a writer for Animality Pet Magazine. It is an online publication. I am looking into featuring a story or personal experiences with a deaf puppy or dog. Whatever your story, I’d love to read it!
Specifically, I am interested in knowing how you coped with learning that your puppy was deaf or that your dog was loosing his hearing, and ways that you modified your views regarding training your puppy.
Thank you!
www.animalitypetmagazine.ca
Thank you for the answers so far! Because I am writing an Article I would love it if I could use names of those involved. (if not please let me know if your answer and I can easily change them)
I am also looking for “how you met” stories! Thanks!
My family fostered a white factored Sable Merle shetland sheepdog that was named Copper. He was found on the streets and was not used to human contact but was a very sweet boy- especially when he discovered pillows existed on the master bed! He was completely deaf and it is presumed that he was probably born deaf. He turned around from a shy dog into an outgoing, social guy that wasn’t ever phased by anything pretty quickly.
We have Shetland Sheepdogs that show and have titles in Rally, Agility, Obedience, and Herding. It wasn’t about whether or not we would train Copper- he was a bright, intelligent, active, high energy, young dog that was a quick learner. It was more about the most effective techniques to helping him learn what we wanted from him. After we worked through that it was more about motivation to keep him interested.
Copper never seemed to be bothered by not being able to hear-since he was probably deaf from birth it was never a ‘loss’ since he never had it to begin with. He simply adapted and found ways to do everything he wanted to do. This was especially important as he was an active, playful dog that wanted lots of stuff to do!
We wound up using a combination of lip reading and signs/hand gestures (using mostly ASL) to teach him basic obedience and agility. We had him for several months as a foster dog (almost kept him!) but he wound up going to his ‘forever’ home. We still hear from his new mom with updates and plenty of photos telling us about his new family and we love hearing from his new family.
There were a lot of people who told us that they felt terrible- that he was handicapped, some felt that we shouldn’t be ‘wasting out time’ teaching a deaf dog- that he wouldn’t do well- all these horrible things. They learned what he was like quite quickly!!
Because he was deaf he had learned to focus on the handler more. He couldn’t hear the handler calling out commands so he had to be able to see us to “hear” what we were “saying” to him. He was more attentive and less prone to distraction because he wasn’t hearing or bothered by the various people talking or the strange noises that might occur. He was also more attentive to body language and picked up on things much more quickly than our ‘hearing’ dogs.
We learned to adjust our habits in training. Again- calling him doesn’t really work. This is something that is pure habit regardless of the fact that the deaf dog has no idea we are looking for him or her! We learned alternatives to getting Copper’s attention. If anyone was turning lights on and off he learned to come quickly and we used this to get his attention most frequently. If we didn’t know where he was and he didn’t know we were looking for him vibrations (such as stomping on the floor or tapping on the wall,) would also catch his attention and he would come find us. 
One thing we noted quite quickly. Many people tended to think Copper was not as intelligent as other dogs because of his “disability.” Copper quickly learned to use this to his advantage- he would shamelessly take advantage of these people if he could to get what he wanted.
If he didn’t want to come or do what we were asking him to do he would pretend not to see us signing to him or flicking the lights. We knew he was attentive and paying attention quite easily though. If he knew we were there after a minute or two he would look back at us to check and see if we were still there.
Now we have Karma, a ten year old blue merle Shetland Sheepdog who is either mostly or completely deaf due to old age and what we used with Copper is coming in handy with Karma! We are using a similar technique of gestures and hand signals that we used with Copper since Karma cannot hear us anymore but still wants to be “in” on the action.
Introducing Inner Dog TV