For the past two years, I have posted feel good stories about our dogs on Christmas day. First I posted about Moose, the three legged cancer survivor. Then last year I shared what a wonderful opportunity it was for a gay couple to experience the wonders of bringing a new life into this world, in The Unlikely Parents. So today is the third installment of this tradition.
I am mostly a lurker here on DailyKos. But I sure enjoy my lurking. I completely love the community here. I have my favorite diarists that I read consistently, but also catch a great story or insight from someone I am not familiar with all the time. Thank you to all for making this place feel so welcoming and stimulating.
Pilot is telling you to follow him over the squiggle to hear all about Pilot the Deaf Dane...
As I explained last year, Pilot was from a single puppy litter, which the dog world calls a Singleton and also carries the “double dominate merle” gene that has made him deaf since birth. Before knowing that Pilot was deaf we knew from the ultrasound that Pilot would likely be the only puppy in the litter. Researching this we found that there are a number of potential development issues for Singleton pups. They miss out on the interactions with the other littermates; don’t experience the frustration of being pushed off the milk spicket by a competing pup and those sorts of social interactions. Then finding out the Pilot was deaf concerned us that he might have a tough time in life.
We tried to do everything possible to help him deal with these two challenges. Reading everything we could on raising Singleton pups as well as raising a deaf puppy. The internet provided great resources on both issues. I found a wonderful yahoo group dedicated to deaf dogs. This group has given me great guidance from day one on training a deaf dog. At first my partner Ross and I were pretty much terrified on what seemed like a huge challenge to train a deaf dog to allow us to keep Pilot safe as well as just to be able to communicate with him. One of the first responses from the yahoo deaf dog group was from an experienced dog trainer from Australia. Her first bit of advice was to realize that the most dominate influence on Pilot is that he is a dog and will behave like dogs do, next on the hierarchy he is a Great Dane and will behave with the typical Great Dane traits, and way way way down on the list of factors influencing his behavior is that he is deaf, or as she put it “he has ears as ornaments”. The other message we got from the yahoo group was that training a deaf dog to respond to hand signals is actually somewhat easier than training a hearing dog to respond to voice commands as dogs naturally communicate with each other mostly by body language.
When Pilot was very young we started taking him to training classes. The first classes were “puppy kindergarten” which is really just an opportunity to socialize with other puppies. Eventually, as he got older he graduated to obedience training classes. We used hand signals instead of the voice commands everyone else was using, but still the same training technique. Pilot began to develop a “vocabulary” of hand signals. We selected common sense one handed signals and just had to be sure that both Ross and I were consistent in the signals we used. Pilot did very well and has learned enough “vocabulary” that we can communicate with him and direct him to try and keep him safe. And just like hearing dogs, he sometimes decides not to obey when he is given a command, but he does pretty darn good.
One issue in deaf dog training is that you have to have eye contact in order to communicate. Pilot has learned that if he looks away from us, he can put us on ignore, which comes in handy for when we are telling him not to do something. Needing this eye contact makes the ultimate challenge in training a deaf dog being able to take him off leash in and un-fenced area. Without special training, there is no way to call to him to come back. There are a couple of techniques that people use for this, vibrating radio controlled collars and/or teaching the dog to be so focused on you that he always has his eye on you for a command. We have not yet quite progressed to that point, but are close. So for now when we take him out of the fenced yard, he has to be on leash at all times.
Today, Pilot is just over one year old. He weighs about 160 lbs and will likely put on another 30-40 before he is done growing. He is about 4 inches taller than his Mom, who is starting to look like she shrunk when she stands next to Pilot. Pilot and Mommy Hazel are still best of friends. They sit together each morning in the sun and groom each other. Hazel tends to spend an inordinate amount of time licking Pilots ears; I think she keeps trying to clean them out so Pilot can hear. They play wild each afternoon around dinner time, chasing each other and jumping all over the place.
So after a bit over a year into this adventure Pilot’s deafness has turned out to be a complete non-issue. He is as well, if not better, trained than our other dogs and has a great life. To be honest, being a Singleton has turned out to be a bigger issue for Pilot than being deaf. As many of the trainers we talked with predicted, Pilot is more strongly bonded with humans than dogs. He loves people, especially the two of us. He does not let us out of his sight the entire time we are together, he is truly a “Velcro dog”.
Once again, our lives are so much fuller thanks to our animal companions. Moose inspired us so much with how easily he adapted to three legs as well as how he didn’t let his fight with cancer interfere with enjoying each and every moment to the fullest. Pilot is continuing this tradition of inspiring and teaching us things we would miss without them.