I think my puppy is deaf.

[JoshLymanIsHotterThanSam]

Picked up our new pup on Saturday. Crate training going okay (a little whiny to start but settles quickly). Went all the way to 4.30 am before waking for a wee last night. She eats well, plays well, I’m mostly getting her outside for all her toileting needs so generally all is going as expected.

However she seems to be completely unresponsive to her name, our voices, any squeaky toys if you hold them behind her where she can’t see them, high pitched whistles or anything. There seems to be no twitching of ears or anything. Could it be puppy ignorance or are we looking at deafness?

Shes a mongrel - mom was a JRT and dad was a Black and Tan Frenchie

Take her to a vet

I'd agree about getting the vet to check her.

Take her to the vet. My friends puppy was like this, and I actually said gently I think the dog is deaf. Another friend in the room at rhe same time said surprised I thought that too, and nope the dog is not remotely deaf. He was just little and in his own world.

we could say his name, squeak toys, anything and he’d ignore us , not react at all. Now he is older and trained he reacts

Perhaps it's deafness; a vet check would be in order.

If it is deafness, I wouldn't be terribly concerned from a training point of view. Dogs are much better at sign language that verbal commands - signs don't vary with accent, tone, pitch etc. My dog - who can hear - has both sign and verbal commands but he's better at understanding the signs than the words. A marker word, or clicker, is commonly replaced by a thumbs up, for instance, and recall can be your arms stretched out wide (helps if the dog is looking at you first though)

Deafness runs in both JRTs and Frenchies, so I'd agree its a possibility but that a vet check is important to really determine and, if so, to check what the cause is (e.g. hereditary and permanent or viral and cureable).

Could be deaf I would definitely get it checked. However our dogs ears don't twitch in response to thing's. To the point my partner thought he was deaf.

He's not, he's just an arse with selective hearing

I will book her into the vets, but i will start to teach some hand signals too just in case. We are not overly concerned if she does turn out to be deaf, our biggest concern is when our older dog grumbles in warning at her when she’s had enough. Dpup isn’t going to hear this warning so we need to be more on our game. I know that an older dog occasionally has to put a pup in its place.

Sounds like you will be fine either way. I adopted a deaf JRT years ago. He was amazing. I taught him loads of hand signals. I am talking about 20 years ago now and I still use hand signals with any new dogs I adopt regardless, just because it is such a great way to communicate with dogs.

If anyone wants to see some of the hand signals I made up, you can see them here :-) www.dfordog.co.uk/blog/deaf-dog-hand-signals.html

My dog is deaf (went deaf when she was about 2). It really isn't anything to worry about too much. Obviously you need to train with hand signals rather than vocal commands, and recall is an issue (my girl is very good at not looking my way when she finds something she wants to do more than walk with me). But I don't think there is any effect on quality of life. You do need to be careful not to sneak up on deaf dogs and to wake them gently - they startle easily. They also tend to sleep very deeply and often have a high-pitched bark which they use quite a lot.

My daughters pup was like this. Nothing at all phases her and she responded to nothing.

We got a lady in who tests whole litters of pups for deafness. She wasn't deaf.

Now she is older she's much better at responding to her name etc but she's still very stubborn and does what she wants when she wants 🤣

Bloody cute though 💕. Take her to the vet as they will confirm either way.