Don’t be Stone-Deaf while Training your Deaf Dog

The news about your dog’s deafness can really be disturbing but if you choose to stay deaf as a post, then you may land up in more troubles than you could possibly handle.

The heartening news about training a deaf dog is that it is not a difficult one as you may expect or anticipate and what all you need is a small amount of extra patience and care to train your deaf dog.

The methods that are employed to train a deaf dog is very similar to that of training a normal dog but for the different cues and virtually there is no time difference when it comes to training a deaf dog. Deaf dogs, similar to normal hearing dogs, learn and understand commands through repetition, and as there is no verbal communication between dogs they do not understand English or any other language for that matter.

In the absence of verbal language when two dogs meet, there is very little verbal communication between the two. Dogs communicate within themselves through body language, scent and other strange sounds. Barking, growling, tail wagging and whining are considered to be the dogs’ vocabulary and dogs use them to communicate and to interact with other dogs.

Besides all these commands, there are also sign languages that dogs can understand and respond to and your dog too can read and understand your body language and hand signs. Working dogs and Competition dogs are mostly trained to use these hand signals or body language cues for getting specific tasks accomplished and you must teach your dog verbal commands before trying out hand signals. Once your dog is introduced to voice commands, there will not be any difficulty for you to teach signals and you may find this process useful in training your deaf dog.

Appropriate Sign Language

When it comes to training a deaf dog, there is no necessity for you to hire a trainer and spend money on your dog’s training. As an owner, you yourself can train your deaf dog and there are many books and other support avenues to know more about training a deaf dog successfully. As dogs can learn through signals, you can utilize this for training your deaf dog and when it comes to signal or signs there is no hard and fast rule for the same. You are free to choose your own signs or signals that may be appropriate to teach your deaf dog a particular lesson.

As per the popular saying “Training a dog is easier than training its owner”, you can really train your deaf dog easy if you can make your mind set at it. In any dog training consistency is key and this applies to all situations whether your dog is deaf or not. When it comes to hand signals, as said earlier, there are no fixed rules and you are free to use your own signs that you are comfortable with. For instance, many people who used ASL (American Sign Language) used by deaf people for training their dogs and they have come out successful, as dogs doesn’t have any vocabulary of its own.

Hence, when it comes to training a deaf dog with hand signals, there are as many choices as you can ever think of because different people use different signals, including the popular ASL while trying to train their deaf dogs.