Sharing our passion for the love and care of deaf dogs.
Our Deaf Dogs Rock community truly believes our deaf dogs have natural super powers because of their heightened senses, lack of hearing, and their the unbreakable bond/trust they have with their handlers (their human BFFs). With these special superpowers comes our list of the Top Ten Reasons Why Deaf Dogs Rock.
I get asked this question all the time why I think deaf dogs rock. Once of my answers is always because I love how much they love each other. I live with four deaf dogs, one unilaterally deaf dog and one hearing Chihuahus and they all adore each other. They watch each other’s body language and cues all the time and play their silly games. When it is meal time, if one deaf dog is awake and the others are sleeping, the one deaf dog races around the room to touch the other deaf dogs to let them know it is meal time. Our Deaf Dogs Rock community calls their deaf dogs “velcro dogs” because they not only stick to their humans like a second shadow, but they also attach themselves to the other dogs in the family. I have four dog shadows who follow me around the house. I can tell you without a doubt I have given up all hopes of ever having any kind of privacy in my life but know I will never be lonely.
A perfect example of how much my deaf dogs love each other is in the photo below called the “Three of Hearts”.
I hope you enjoy our list of 10 Reasons Why Deaf Dogs Rock.
~ Christina, Bud, Axl Blu, Bowie, Marshall Tucker, Ringo Star and Tallulah Jane.
In this photo Bud and Nitro’s love shapes a perfect heart around deaf puppy Bowie.
Below are the Top 10 Reasons Why Deaf Dogs Rock put together with the help of our Deaf Dogs Rock FB community
***** Not all of these may apply to your deaf dog so you can pick and choose the reason’s that apply to your dog! ****
Top 10 Reasons Why Deaf Dogs Rock
10. Deaf Dogs Rock because they are not afraid of thunderstorms or neighbors shooting their guns while doing target practice.
9. Deaf Dogs Rock because they excel in therapy dog work, emotional support dog work, and service dog assistance because they don’t have a fear or anxiety that usually comes with loud noises like hearing dogs do.
8. Deaf Dogs Rock because they don’t chase the vacuum cleaner but instead enjoy the vibration of that comes from the suction of the device (with exception of some deaf dog like Bowie who like to attack the device).
Photo above: provided by Victoria Delgado and Elizabeth Morris Spahr
7. Deaf Dogs Rock because you can sneak into the kitchen for a late night snack, open a bag of potato chips and your deaf dog doesn’t wake up.
6. Deaf Dogs Rock because they can smell an intruder (and feel the vibration of a car coming from a distance) way before your hearing dogs can see an intruder.
5. Deaf Dogs Rock because you can do a big construction project in your home and they never hear the nail gun, hammer or saw!
4. Deaf Dogs Rock because you can take a deaf dog to big events like pet expos and they can’t hear all the other dogs barking.
3. Deaf Dogs Rock because you can play rock/country/hip hop/rap music or sing in your car, at home, or in the shower as loud as you want and your deaf dog can’t hear you.
2. Deaf Dogs Rock because they are the ultimate Velcro dog – no matter where you are located in your house you will always have a second shadow following you around from room to room.
1. The number one reason Deaf Dogs Rock is because “Deaf Dogs hear with their hearts.”
Bowie is my sunshine and he hears everything I say to him with his heart!
If your interested in adopting a deaf dog, please check out the adoptable deaf dogs section on our website by clicking here.
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100% of donated funding goes directly to helping deaf dogs and their owners. Everyone in our organization donates their time.
The sixth sense in deaf dogs
Almost everyone knows about dogs’ amazing intelligence and intuition; these characteristics are almost as famous as their loyalty. Their ability to sense certain situations before they occur is part of the traits that we’ll point out when talking about canine’s sixth sense.
There isn’t any scientific data that confirms a sixth sense in dogs. However, it’s been proven that dogs are very intuitive and they can tell if you’re happy or sad just by hearing your voice and reading your body language.
Dogs can perceive a storm that’s approaching. They may jump into your lap to take cover or start barking to warn the family of possible danger. If we cold understand what he’s trying to tell us, then we’d be able to prepare ourselves for incoming adverse weather conditions.
An addition to this, some seismologists think that dogs can predict earthquakes. There are two theories in this regard. The first is that dogs can feel the vibrations of the earth in their legs. The second states that, due to their sensitive hearing, canines can hear the rocks breaking underneath the ground.
Deafness in dogs can be the result of several different factors, and no breed is exempt from the condition. The main reasons for the lack of hearing in our pets are:
Many dogs are born without a sense of hearing. These animals come into the world without the ability to hear for congenital reasons. In most cases, the problem is genetic. This implies that, from conception, a barrier is formed in the auditory apparatus.
There are some breeds and characteristics that are more prone to this type of disability. The bull terrier and the boxer are two of the breeds that suffer from this condition most frequently. Dogs with white fur are also more likely to be born deaf.
Different states of inflammation can cause ear infections that can lead to deafness in dogs. Depending on the depth of the ear infection, our furry friend may suffer from different types of otitis: external, average and internal.
Another factor that you have to consider is that the dog may have received a blow to his ear. This can cause minor deafness, but it’s very common in animals. Severe trauma in the dog’s ear can cause permanent and irreversible damage.
Dogs, like humans, cannot avoid the ravages that time leaves on their bodies. Dogs’ ears also age and lose their innate abilities. So, even if your dog is born with a good sense of hearing, the years can affect his hearing and his age may result in deafness.
How can deaf dogs understand humans?
We all know that the process of domesticating dogs has made them develop a unique ability to read our gestures and body postures, to the point of making decisions and performing behaviors according to what we expect from them. A recent survey compared dogs’ responses to simple cues such as sitting, lying down, staying, and coming when called, and found that they respond better to gestures than verbal cues1. Deaf dogs, despite suffering from an important sensory deficit, have no difficulty understanding what we communicate to them. On the contrary, many trainers around the world with experience in training deaf dogs claim that these dogs have an even easier time reading our body posture when compared to hearing dogs2. This makes a lot of sense, especially for dogs that suffer from congenital sensorineural deafness, who, it is widely believed, tend to develop all other senses more acutely.3,4,5
There are also many authors who claim, even in an empirical way, that deaf dogs establish a much stronger bond with their owners and therefore are easier to train than hearing dogs.4,5,6 This can also be a consequence of this heightened ability to observe our gestures, body posture and, why not, our emotional state.
Communication with deaf dogs takes place, basically, through gestures. The gestures become cues that work not only for the dog to perform any behavior, but also as a signal associated with some object or someone, such as a car, ball, Mom, food. Most trainers and owners of deaf dogs end up using the same signals that are already used in basic training of hearing dogs, both for simple and advanced behavior. But there is still the possibility to use ASL (American Sign Language) or even invented gestures..
It is impossible to talk about deafness in dogs without talking about Dalmatians. It is the breed most affected by deafness, surpassing the second highest breed rate by 15 percentage points. In the latest survey done by the leading specialist in deafness, Dr. George M. Strain7, almost 30% of Dalmatians were diagnosed with deafness (between unilateral and bilateral). And, unfortunately, that number is not likely to decrease, as kennels do not tend to eliminate from breeding the strains that generated deaf dogs. Another way to reduce this number would be to change the pigmentation pattern of the breed, as it is already proven that more pigmented specimens (including those with patches, which are considered non-standard) reveal a significantly lower rate for deafness.
My personal history is marked by the presence of Dalmatians. My first Dalmatian, Joaninha, came to my house in the year of my birth. She could hear (there are reports that she warned my parents when I cried in the crib), but she was the mother of a deaf (blue-eyed) dog. This deaf dog was donated to a family very close to us and I ended up growing up with both dogs. Unfortunately, no one was attuned to deafness in dogs at the time, and Jonas was a dog with many challenges. He attacked people when surprised while his back was turned, had some issues with touch, and was often quite agitated, considered by the family as “unpredictable” and with a “strong temper.”
After many years, when I decided as an adult to have my first dog, of course my spouse and I chose a Dalmatian. Even knowing the problem of the breed and choosing a good kennel, I discovered two weeks after the purchase, that Magali was profoundly deaf. As a result, I ended up becoming a professional dog trainer, as I fell in love with the profession after researching the best ways to communicate with her. When Magali died from pancreatitis at the age of 8, I was completing my post-graduate course in animal behavior, the culmination of which would be a study on our communication. The work ended up becoming just an analysis of what we had already built, but I could not go any further.
Two months after losing Magali, Milka appeared in my life. Milka is a 5-year-old male Dalmatian with congenital bilateral deafness. I adopted him at 56 days old from one of the few kennels here in Brazil who openly admitted to producing some deaf dogs. When I decided to adopt Milka, I felt much more prepared to deal with a deaf dog, not least because I already worked in dog training and specifically with the training of deaf dogs for 8 years. However, I did not imagine that he would develop compulsive behavior (he chases shadows and lights). The problem started when he was about 6 months old. Despite feeling quite powerless in the face of the situation, I tried to study more, to deepen and invest even more in our bond and our communication, as the main tool in all the behavioral modification work I did with him.
Based on some studies that demonstrate the unlimited learning capacity of a deaf dog, the strong bond that is established between them and humans, and my living with deaf dogs for almost 40 years, I decided to go beyond everything I knew in terms of communication with deaf dogs.
Milka’s response to our daily training has always been above my expectations. He learned everything very quickly and his ability to focus and connect with me has always been the subject of comments among all the trainers and dog owners who follow my work. A trainer I was talking to about Milka asked if I had already tried using a verbal marker with him. I thought the idea was bold, but I decided to try it out. In less than four days of training, pairing the previous marker (a thumbs up sign) with the new marker (“yes”), Milka started to anticipate and respond with a clear positive conditioned emotional response (CER+) with only “yes.” Throughout the process, I took care to remove all prompts to ensure that the only SD present would be my facial expression.
From there, a world of possibilities opened up within the scope of our communication. I thought: Since we have achieved this, why not try with behaviors that he already consistently performed with very subtle gestures? We started with the verbal cue “senta” (which means “sit”). Milka was already responding to the gesture to sit in a very subtle way. He learned to sit by luring, but, little by little, I decreased the intensity of the gesture, so that he ultimately responded with just a small movement of my hand, even from a distance.
“Sit” with a gesture at a distance
So, I started to do the pairing using classical conditioning, making only the movement with my mouth to say “senta” and then making the old cue (the gesture). It took a few sessions for Milka to start anticipating the gesture to sit and to do the behavior right after the verbal cue. I consider this to be a great milestone in our communication, as I didn’t think we would succeed. I was extremely touched and, after that, I started to test all the possibilities of stimulus control, to make sure that the behavior was happening only due to the reading of the movements of my lips.
“Sit” with lip reading (“senta”) with another person, in a different location
“Sit” with lip reading (“senta”) with distance, with another person, on a place
We then started with the behavior “deita” (which means “lie down”), which I decided to do with a more pronounced difference on the lips, because it would be almost impossible to differentiate it from “senta” if I didn’t (in Portuguese, the lip movement for the words “senta” and “deita” are very similar). So, I started the same pairing process and, after he was anticipating the response, I did all the stimulus control tests. Milka’s understanding and response was very quick, and I realized that differentiating the movement of the lips was fundamental for this.
“Down” with lip reading (“deita”), with initial standing position
“Down” with lip reading (“deita”), with another person, in another location
“Down” with lip reading (“deita”), with distance, on a place
The next step was quite challenging. I wanted to test the cue “vem” (which means “come”). This verbal cue, in my experience as a trainer of clients’ dogs and other professional trainers, is one of the most difficult to guarantee a good stimulus control, because everything can be considered a discriminative stimulus (distance, body movements, gestures with the head). I ended up being extra careful to ensure that he came only because of my lip movements.
“Come” with lip reading (“vem”), with another person
We are currently building the “spin,” and pairing it with the blink of an eye. Previously, I tried to do it with a more pronounced movement of the mouth and head, as if it were a sneeze, but in the tests of stimulus control, it was clear that there was a lot of trial and error. For the time being, I got only three anticipations of response in different training sessions. I imagine that the conditioning of the two cues has not yet happened. But we are on the way!
“Spin” with the blink of both eyes and the gesture
Deafness in Dogs
“Dogs are gifted with the ability to easily rely on their other senses to make up for one that they have either lost or never had in the first place. Dogs with total congenital deafness are born deaf and never experience the sensation of sound. They do not know that they are deaf or that they are any different from other dogs. Most astute and reputable breeders will recognize a deaf puppy well before the puppies are ready to go to their new owners, and will fully disclose the dog’s condition to potential owners. Normal puppies start responding to sound from about day 10 onward after birth.
Dogs with acquired deafness usually become deaf gradually. Most owners do not discover that their dog is “going deaf” until the animal has lost most of its ability to hear. They may notice that something about their dog seems a bit “off,” but they usually do not suspect hearing loss until it has become fairly obvious.