Deaf Dog

[Toooldtoworry]

Me again, sorry.

One of my dogs has had to have a bilateral teca (ear canal removal) and his hearing is seriously depleted. He is 20 months. How do I train him in sign? Has anyone got any tips? Trainers near me haven't been particularly helpful.

I won't be letting him off lead unless in a completely secure field.

Picture because I think he's gorgeous! not biased at all

Initially you want to encourage natural check ins. So have treats on you at all time, at home and out and about and every and I mean every time he looks at you give him a treat.

The more frequent checkins you get all your training will be easy.

Whenever he is walking towards you put your arms right high to the side of you -treat when he gets to you. This will be his recall sign.

He checks in with you- you put your arms out he recognises this as recall.

When you are him to sit lure him with a treat but bring your hand up as you do it with the treat in it. Soon raising your hand up will be the cue to sit.

Heel work feed at your leg frequently with your hand flat pointing down. He will eventually learn down flat hand will be the cue for heel work.

I would stick to just a few behaviours and increase the distance that you train them

I would not and the Deaf Dog Network does not recommend the use of vibrate collars as they can be pretty uncomfortable for the dogs.

Having a deaf dog may feel horrendous for the owners but the dogs cope really well. Do be aware of people and dogs especially approaching your dog from behind and be happy to advocate for your dog.

He looks a sweetie

My old dog lost his hearing with age, so indoors he responded well to three stamps on the floor to get his attention (we have carpet covered wooden floors so. the vibrations carry, not sure it would work on a concrete floor) and to get him to come I would do the above of arms wide open, he was quite receptive to noting waving arms if you could catch his eye, but I kept him on a Flexi lead on walks, and was always weary of dogs approaching from behind incase he hadn't seem them.

The only issue we had was being careful if he was in a deep deep sleep that we didn't startle him awake as it happened a couple of times before I realised quite how deaf he was, and it did distress him, but he was happy living in his own quiet little bubble.

This is good advice. I have an old dog who has become completely deaf. He has dementia as well, so not much hope for retraining there, but I’m training the dog I recently adopted with signals as well as voice commands so if the same ever happens to her, there’s back up.

With my dogs I train hand signals similar to the way my hand is when I am luring, so for sit I hold the treat between my thumb and first two fingers with my finger pointing upwards as I lure into a sit, that then becomes the hand sign for sit. Down is the same but the fingers point down. Stay, I will hold the treat against my palm with my thumb and hold my hand out to the dog, palm forward etc etc.

For recall on my deaf dog, I used a vibrating collar. Let me be very clear that I mean a vibrating collar, not an e-collar or shock collar. It didn't vibrate hard to cause pain and he wore it fairly loose. I paired the vibration with a treat the same way you "charge" a clicker with treats. He would automatically recall for a treat when his collar vibrated.

Thank you. Feel a bit better after reading your responses. Was feeling a bit overwhelmed.