For most people the scene is very familiar, you return home to be greeted by the family dog who is very excited to see you, wagging his tail, jumping up, bringing you his favourite toy and showing you how pleased he is to see you.
Now imagine the scene in a home of a deaf dog. You arrive, open the door bring in the shopping, make a cup of tea, even turn on the tv and through all this your dog is still fast asleep!!

Welcome to the silent world in which the deaf dog lives.

When it comes to deafness there are generally two forms.
There is the dog who is profoundly deaf. This literally means total deafness. The other have an ability to hear very sharp sounds very close.
Let’s first get rid of the myth; that deaf dogs are more aggressive, this is total nonsense. People are frightened that waking a deaf dog from a deep sleep will startle it and therefore cause it to bite. As any owner of a deaf dog knows the way to wake it is to stamp on the floor, the vibration will wake it.

The obvious problems are that these dogs don’t hear traffic, so for a stray, vehicles are a major hazzard and if the dog is adopted then communicating your instructions to your dog becomes problematic. Think about it, in order to get your message across you have to use hand signals but in order to do this you need your dog to look at you and if he can’t hear you how do you get his attention.

So what are the options when training a deaf dog?

1 If you already have a dog in the house that hears the hearing dog will help teach the deaf dog and you’ll be able to introduce hand signals.
2 Deaf dogs are no different to hearing dogs in that they will follow food and if they know that you have some they may be inclined to stay close.
3 You can try investing in a vibrating collar but they have limited success.
4 If you are new to this you may need to seek help from a professional who has personal experience.
5 There are a number of videos to help you and in my opinion they are essential to the owner with no experience

This blog is far too short to go into the intricacies of training a deaf dog and without doubt it is challenging but extremely rewarding.

R

“You think that dogs will not be in heaven. I tell you that they will be there long before any of us”

Robert Louis Stevenson