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I’ve been so busy with Castiel that I haven’t had time to update his blog!
Castiel is doing very well. We start formal training classes in a week. He’s learning to heel with a wave of the hand near our hip. He walks beautifully on a loose lead. He cuddles us and loves us. He’s learning manners. He’s very well socialized and now weighs 40 lbs!
His recall is quite good (practiced in a fenced off area) as long as he’s looking at us. Down the road, we’ll likely get a remote vibration collar to use as his ‘look at me’ command.
He gets along really well with our cats and he loves people. Most people don’t believe us when we tell them he’s deaf.
All that said, and I’m going to be updating MUCH more regularly, I’d like to take a moment to talk about another marginalized group that’s in more danger even than deaf dogs.
I live in Ontario. In Ontario, all ‘pit bull type’ dogs are banned. This includes any animal that looks like a ‘pit bull.’ If your animal is mistaken for a pit, they can enter your home and remove the dog and you may or may not be able to get them to bring it back to you, even if you are able to prove that your dog is not a pit. It’s stupid and dog bites haven’t decreased in the years since this legislation passed.
If you have a ‘grandfathered’ pit bull, then your animal must be muzzled at all times in public.
Today, Castiel and I attended the Million Mutt March in Toronto. Sadly, Kelly had to work. While there, Castiel saw muzzles for the first time in his life.
A friendly, sweet natured ‘pit bull’ approached him, tail wagging. This dog was muzzled. Castiel, my puppy, in a panic, snapped and yelped and skittered backwards in horror. The dog in the wheelchair didn’t frighten him. The dog with no eyes didn’t scare him. My puppy, who confidently approaches ‘scary’ breeds like Dogo Argentine, was frightened in a way that I have never seen before. Castiel has been introduced to somewhere in the vicinity of 150 to 200 dogs or more in his short life. We strongly believe in socialization as being one of the best ways to have a balanced, good natured animal.
I attribute his terror to the muzzle on the animal’s face. That was the only reason for him to be afraid. That was the only difference between this dog and any of the hundred or more others that Castiel has met and gotten along with. I spoke to my friend, who has two great danes, and apparently hers are often afraid of dogs with certain muzzles on. Her dogs fear the cage style muzzles. Castiel seemed most afraid of the strap type ones.
After awhile, Castiel stopped panicking when faced with muzzled animals and he calmed down. We had a great time at the March and met so many awesome people. In spite of that, the image of Castiel running from a potential friend in terror stays with me.
Why are people really afraid of ‘dangerous breeds’? I believe that the muzzles make people afraid of the dogs, as much as anything, and that their fear reactions instigate fear reactions from the dogs, in a vicious cycle where someone, in the end, gets hurt. Any trainer worth their salt will tell you that reacting with fear to an animal will make it scare you and can create behaviour problems!
Why are we making dogs scary? Why are we making it so that animals respond to each other and us in fear? Why are we CREATING a problem in this manner?
Please help Ontario stop breed specific legislation. First they came for the Pit Bulls… Who’s next? There’s a city in the US where all dogs over 100 lbs, regardless of breed, are banned as dangerous animals.
I leave you with a quote from Martin Niemöller. Just replace socialists, trade unionists and Jews with pit bulls, rottweilers and dobermans and you’ll have some idea of why breed specific legislation affects EVERY dog owner.
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
This is the poor baby that terrified Castiel. Photograph courtesy of Paul Hickey Photography.
After the past week, there is very little doubt in my mind that crates save lives–and not just due to accidents. As discussed in a past post, puppies are balls of mischief, urine and teeth. They are constantly underfoot. They need constant supervision. If you’ve ever read Harry Potter, remember the battlecry of Mad-Eye Moody–“CONSTANT VIGILANCE!” You now have an idea of what life is like with a new puppy that you don’t want to lock into a single empty room.
We put off too long getting Castiel’s crate. And thus we had no crate when he arrived. We said “Oh, don’t worry about it. We’ll just tether him to us 24/7 and it’ll be the same thing. We’ll get his crate in a few days.”
Those two days took their toll on us. We had him in bed with us. He was tied to us 24/7. By the time a day had gone by, we were exhausted. We couldn’t eat–food prep was impossible with puppy teeth in our ankles. We couldn’t sleep enough to have any meaning–puppy was bouncing on us wanting to play. We couldn’t take a deep breath and sit at our computers for ten minutes to think–puppy wanted to know what these things were we were paying attention to when we should CLEARLY BE LOOKING AT HIM!
We made it five nights like that and both of us were honestly just about ready to pack it in. Five nights of constantly needing to pay attention to the puppy with no ability to sit down, calm down and breathe. We were exhausted. We were fighting with each other. We were getting short with him. I’m not ashamed to admit this because it will help others.
Then we went out and bought his crate. He’s never in there all that long–we want to take him out and play with him. But when we are making food or eating, it’s so nice not to have a puppy helping. We got sleep last night. Actual sleep. Hours of it. It was brilliant. I have never enjoyed a meal more than I enjoyed the food we ate with him in the crate for our first meal after CONSTANT VIGILANCE.
Anyone who might say to anyone that a crate is cruel and you wouldn’t cage a family member, I laugh. You most certainly would. If you had a baby who was just starting to crawl, wouldn’t you put that baby down somewhere enclosed, like a pack and play or a crib, in order to keep them safe while you did laundry or the cooking? If you wouldn’t, then you’re probably wearing the baby on your chest or in some other way restraining it. Puppies need restraint. No one can, 24/7 be on alert. You can’t do it. It’s impossible.
If you had a colicky baby who required 24/7 carrying and soothing, you would eventually need to put the baby down for five minutes and walk away or you would go insane and do something unpleasant to yourself or the child or someone else. Crates are the place you can put the puppy to nap so you can do something that doesn’t involve the puppy.
As I write this, Castiel is sound asleep in his crate, curled up with his pet pteranadon, Myfanwy and his Nylabone. We had a late dinner and I decided to write this after eating. He hasn’t woken up since we started eating–and he went in the crate when we started. He hasn’t been in there long, but he’s totally happy to nap. It’s no different than napping at our feet, except that we don’t have to spend the whole time watching for signs of wakefulness and worrying that we’re not going to be able to finish dinner.
And that, my friends, is what we call a lifesaver.
When the vet saw him to determine his hearing, the vet’s opinion was that he was almost completely deaf or deaf and no further testing was needed. There was some debate as to whether he might have some small amount of hearing, but he was so non-reactive to sound that it didn’t matter for training purposes.
This afternoon, the fire alarm went off. Kelly was home with Castiel. Castiel was napping in his crate (He is a puppy and, as stated in a previous post, he can get obnoxious, so Kel was taking a brief puppy break). The fire alarm for our building is very loud. It’s louder and more piercing than any school fire alarm that I’ve ever heard in my life.
Castiel slept through it. He didn’t even wake up until Kelly opened the crate door to take him outside. When he was awake, he was completely chill about it and didn’t react to the sound at all.
We’ve found some benefits to this lack of hearing. We can discuss things while the puppy is napping without waking him up. We can do dishes without having the puppy get disturbed. When the cats start yelling at each other in the other room, the puppy doesn’t go to investigate.
It does pose challenges. I mentioned bite inhibition before. We have to grab his muzzle and give him a shake to train him not to bite, which I feel so bad doing to a puppy his age, but, as someone said to us, imagine how bad we’d feel if someone got hurt, dealing with animal control and insurance companies.
This is certainly a new and exciting journey for us.
I am going to tell you a secret. Some people might be horrified to hear it.
Puppies are not tiny balls of sunshine, happiness and perfection. They are four-legged balls of mischief, urine and naughtiness.
The ‘shiny’ of getting a new puppy wears off very, very quickly. Usually about the third time they pee on your floor or the fourth time you take them out in freezing temperatures to pee only to have them stare at you like you’re the biggest moron they’ve ever seen in your life and refuse to urinate–only to do it as soon as you get into the nice, warm house.
I’d like to take a moment to discuss a quote I found in another blog called Dog Foster Mom. I found this quote in a post entitled Deaf Dogs, discussing her first deaf foster, a dog named Tulsa.
“I forgot one basic rule – a dog is a dog first, their breed second, and their disability last.”
Castiel is an 8 week old puppy. His personality is perfect for us and he will grow into the dog we want, I’m sure of that. But right now, he’s a dog first and a puppy more specifically. He chews everything in sight. He barks at the cats. He wants to play when we don’t want to play (like at 2 am) and wants to nap when we want to play. He’d rather chew anything we don’t want him to chew than what we do want him to chew.
None of this has anything to do with his breed or his disability. This all is simply a reflection of being a baby animal with sharp pointy teeth and the ability to move around with some level of co-ordination. He is a dog. At this point, his breed doesn’t even play into it yet, outside of his size. It’s a little frustrating to take the puppy for a walk and have him get tired and need to carry home a dog as big as he is! But that’s our fault for overestimating his stamina. We’ve made a sling out of a bedsheet to take with us in case of over-tired puppy.
When he gets just a little tired or doesn’t want to move, he simply puts his butt down and stares at us. We’ve decided to just ignore him when he does this–within a few seconds of no attention, he changes his mind and decides to come with us after all. He wants attention.
He also wants both of his people together. He wants us both in his sight whenever possible, which is rather adorable. He’ll sit his bum down if someone falls behind on a walk and wait for them to come into sight. He’s already bonding to us and that’s wonderful.
He’s sweet. He’s cuddly. He’s very excited to see us. We love him like no one’s business. He also seems to have some cleverness to him.
About 4 out of 5 times, Castiel is responding correctly to our sign for sit. It’s not set in stone and we’re reinforcing it heavily, but this is huge. He’s been home just about 48 hours, so this is a big update for us. Other commands will take more time, but hopefully this is an excellent start and is a sign of good things to come.
Castiel arrived home yesterday. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be home to meet him–I had to work. This made me sad, but I survived. He’s beautiful. He’s sweet.
And he chews everything! He’s also a ‘steal pee-er.’
We’re working on the chewing. I was expecting it. He’s an 8 week old puppy. They chew things. So we went out and bought him toys to chew on. He’d rather chew on our bike tires (we keep our bikes in the apartment because there’s no safe place to keep them here), our dustpan, our clothes and us. So the name of the game right now is redirect, redirect, redirect, redirect and ignore him when he chews on us. We’ve added a plastic pop bottle to our list of ‘acceptable chewies’. He likes to chase it when we toss it.
I’m having some issues with bite inhibition–traditional bite inhibition won’t work with him because he doesn’t respond to a ‘yip’ sound. I’ll be consulting trainers for this, but, for now, the response we’re using is to remove whatever he just nipped and then ignore him until he does something else. We’re doing a LOT of rewarding him for good behaviour to make sure that poor behaviour is not nearly as appealing as good behaviour. We’ll be meeting with some new friends of ours who have trained their deaf danes without help (and trained them pretty much perfectly) for advice and assistance and we’ll start puppy classes next month.
As for housebreaking, well, that’s a challenge wholly unrelated to his hearing! Castiel pees on the sly. I don’t mean by that that he goes to a corner he can’t be seen and pees (we don’t let him out of our sight in the flat). I mean that he doesn’t sniff or paw or even squat before he starts peeing. We’ve got him on a timer when he’s awake right now. Every ten minutes, he goes out. He gets a couple of minutes on a patch of grass outside and, if he pees, he gets loving and a little fragment of a chicken dog treat (pure baked chicken). We had a couple of accidents last night while we adjusted to the stealth peeing and discovered a timeline that worked for him (fifteen minutes is too long–we kept missing him by literally one minute), but, knock on wood, no accidents yet today.
Castiel slept through the night very well, between us in bed (so we could take him out right away when he woke up to catch him peeing and be able to reward him for peeing outside). We’re currently following umbilical or tethered training techniques because we want him to learn to look to us before doing anything. We need for him to learn to look right at us so we can give him commands.
We’re working on teaching him to sit right now and, when greeting people on walks, we don’t allow him to put his paws on people at all. The number one thing we’re trying to remember with training Castiel is that, while he’s small right now, he is growing up very quickly. If it isn’t something that would be okay for a 150 lb dog to do, then it isn’t appropriate for him to do now.
Today, we got to meet our baby for the first time. He’s beautiful. His temperament is absolutely perfect for us. He and his mum and his Grandma Dori came to our place to let him explore for a couple of hours. It was one of the best experiences of my life.
Castiel appears to have some very limited hearing, though we’re not sure on it. When he’s asleep, if you clap right near his head or whistle right next to his ear, he does wake up, but it’s not with a startle. It’s more a gentle ‘something just bugged me’ so it may be that he is very sensitive to air currents. If he does have any hearing, it is limited enough that it may as well not exist. We tried clapping away from him when he was awake and, while his mother startled, he didn’t even seem to notice. At this point, though, it’s impossible to say if he heard it and was just so overstimulated that he didn’t notice or if he just couldn’t hear it.
We had a lot of fun. Our smallest cats weren’t very happy, but they had calmed down by the end of the visit. He pranced around and investigated everything. He really liked the water from our cat fountain, which just cemented the fact that I’m going to buy a larger water fountain for him. I was so happy.
At the end of his visit, we took him to the pet shop around the corner to meet our favourite clerks. He had a collar and leash on for the first time ever and he walked brilliantly. His leash was loose the whole way, pretty well, though he didn’t seem to like his paws on the very cold cement, so we ended up carrying him for stretches to let them warm up.
At the pet shop, he explored for a few minutes, then fell asleep on the floor between my partner’s feet.
He comes home the 19th and we can’t wait.
Today, we got an email from Castiel. He’s doing well and growing every day. The picture above is of his first drink of water from the big dogs’ bowl! He’s a cutie pie. I love the dribbles on the edge of the bowl!
Here’s the body of his email:
To my new family,
Hi this is castiel here, it is very difficult to type with claws but I am gonna try while grandma dori is out of the room, You see I love exploring and I hate being cooped up in the pen with Mom and my siblings. Today Grandma let me out and I hung out with my dad Cruiser and my half sister Rain (she is 14 weeks so is fun to play with but sometimes I think she thinks I am one of her stuffed toys she has one that is bigger then me!!) but not for long cause I am growing every day. It was so much fun to be free!! and then I got to take a nap on Grandma’s bed with Rain. it was better then the dog bed we have in the pen and beside shade never lets me or any of the Harls in. just Her and Trent get to go in and she growls if me or the harls try! She is very Bossy!! but she will be so jelous that I got to go on the big bed…
then I got to drink out of the big dogs water dish but I don’t like water very much it is too cold, I prefer Mom’s milk cause it is nice and warm. We got shavings in our pen yesterday so we are learning how to not potty on the blankets. I sometimes forget but when you gotta go you gotta go.
we also got to try this Mushy stuff that Grandma put in the pen yesterday. It was really good and I had a great time slurping it up but then Mom gave me a bath which I hate, she puts her giant foot on me and licks me all over and I can’t move until I am clean.
well I gotta go… (feel free to put this on my blog!!) have more adventures will type more msg to you just wanted you to know what a day in the life of me was like…
Love
CASTIEL
Clever little thing, isn’t he? Thanks to his Grandma Dori for ‘helping’ him with that.
We’re very fortunate in that Grandma Dori is also willing to board him any time we need to go away, which makes me very happy that he’ll be going to someone that we KNOW loves him already.
I’ve spoken before, briefly, about the fact that many breeders ‘cull’ the white puppies, not allowing them to live. I’d like to speak more on this and why I think it is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. It accomplishes nothing and, most importantly, it does not prevent deaf animals! In this post, I am speaking specifically of animals who are born deaf due to being light in colour or white.
All cats and dogs are born blind and deaf. The only difference between a deaf puppy and one that can hear is that the deaf puppy just stays deaf after its ears open. It will never know that it is deaf because we have no way to say ‘other dogs can hear and you can’t’ that the puppy will understand. Even if this animal were to be bred (and I’m not saying that a deaf animal should be) it can only pass on one copy of the gene that makes it so light in colour, meaning it has no greater likelihood of having deaf offspring than its parents did, provided it is not bred to another ‘white.’ Genetically speaking, a deaf puppy is sound stock.
There is no conformation issue inherent in colour-related deafness. Nothing I have been able to uncover says that they’re more likely to suffer any issue but skin cancer. The skin cancer issue has to do with the lack of pigment, which allows them to sunburn more easily than their coloured counterparts–in other words, it’s not inherent to the colour, it’s due to owners leaving them out in the sun to fry. In a future post, I will cover what can be done to help prevent sunburns in white animals.
One of the things that bothers me most is that they don’t even wait to see if a white animal is going to be deaf or not. They put the animal down shortly after birth. They leave the puppies in their sacks to suffocate to death, not even letting them breathe their first breath. Not every single white animal is deaf or blind. Most have one issue or the other, yes, but these breeders don’t even give the animal the chance to prove its hearing and vision.
So why is it that breeders are killing white puppies? Quite simply, it’s a matter of appearances. It ‘looks poorly’ on the breed to have deaf danes or deaf dalmatians running around. This attitude bothers me. You might as well say that it looks poorly upon humans for there to be deaf children running around. No one actually thinks that way about humans, so why think that way about puppies?
I honestly don’t know. It’s completely unimaginable to me. No one knows how many deaf puppies are born every year because so many are killed. There’s no way to properly study the percentages of deaf puppies because they don’t live long enough to be hearing tested. This saddens and sickens me.
What saddens and sickens me even more is the way that breeders who do not cull the white babies are treated by the community. They’re treated like heretics and as though they’re ruining the breeds. How is it ruining a breed to allow an animal to grow up, be neutered/spayed and loved by people?
Castiel is a dog like any other and he deserves his chance at a long, healthy life with people who love him. I’m so grateful that our beautiful baby isn’t one of the possibly thousands of puppies who die every year at the hands of breeders who think deaf dogs are worthless, untrainable or vicious. They’re not and over the days, weeks, months and years that we have Castiel to love, we’re going to prove every single one of them wrong.
There are a lot of resources out there that go into more detail as to why the white dog is deaf, so if you want an in-depth explanation of why the white dog is deaf, I urge you to look at some of these sites. Google will also help you to find information on the genetics of deaf dogs. I’m going to give a simplified explanation here for the layman, just so that it’s recorded in this blog for people reading through. The same genetics can be used to explain deafness in cats, as well as blindness in both cats and dogs.
With dogs, there are a couple of genes that can be responsible for deafness. There are the merle gene and the piebald gene. The merle gene is seen in collies, Harlequin great danes (like Castiel!), old English sheep dogs and other breeds. The piebald gene is seen in dalmatians, Samoyeds and greyhounds, among others. Basically, some of these animals have two copies of these genes and they don’t develop enough pigment (the substance that makes the black spots on Castiel’s face and tail or the spots on a dalmatian–basically, pigment is colour) in their inner ears or, in some cases, their eyes while the ears and eyes are developing long before the animal is even born.
There’s some debate on what happens and why, but the most common reason I’ve found for what happens is that there is something about the lack of pigment that makes the veins and arteries to the inner ear and/or the eyes that makes them smaller and therefore not put as much blood through to the inner ear and/or the eyes. After the animal is born, before its ears and eyes open, the nerves in the inner ear and, in some cases, the eyes, die off from lack of oxygen, rendering the baby blind or deaf or, in some cases, both.
The result? A cat or a dog who is beautiful and white, but who is also either blind or deaf. Blindness is a rarer result of the double merle/double piebald, but it does happen. We’re fortunate in that Castiel is already motoring around with his belly off the ground like other puppies do when their eyes are freshly open, so he’s very unlikely to be blind. Even if he was, we would still take him and love him. He’s a beautiful animal and we can’t wait for him to come home in February.
There are a lot of things to consider when taking on a deaf dog or even considering it. You need to consider training and trainers, boarding accommodations, training equipment as well as all the normal dog things like a crate, what food you want to feed, vets, what kind of collar you want to use and how to puppy-proof your home. Getting a deaf dog is a bit like adopting a deaf child. You need to have some idea of what the future holds and not just in temperament, preferably before making a final decision. This goes doubly for an animal that will likely outweigh its owner by the time it is fully grown, though even a tiny little chihuahua needs to have these considerations.
Perhaps the first and most important consideration is contacting trainers in your area. Dog training is never the easiest thing on the planet. If you’re not used to talking about virtually everything with your hands, you need to get help from a trainer to get started with your training and probably for support throughout your dog’s life. There are dozens of guides out there for picking a trainer who works for you, but there are a couple of questions you need to ask a potential trainer in addition to the ones listed on other blogs and sites. Two of the most important are “Do you allow deaf puppies in your puppy socialization classes?” and “Have you ever trained a deaf dog before?” You want to make sure that your puppy is going to be properly socialized, just like any other puppy. You want to know that your animal’s particular challenges are something that the trainer is aware of.
After determining that the trainer has trained a deaf dog before, you should ask how many deaf dogs he or she has trained, what kind of techniques they recommend and why. Another good question is if they have trained a deaf dog of your breed/breeds. There are a wide variety of techniques for training dogs and not all dogs respond to all techniques, just like not all children learn in the same ways. You’re looking for a trainer who can explain the whys of his or her philosophy, who is willing to be flexible and who espouses ideals that you are comfortable with. We’re very lucky, our breeder is putting us in contact with a trainer friend of hers who has deaf danes, but we had already started the process of narrowing the field of trainers in Toronto from the day that we saw pictures of Castiel and were so sure he was to be ours, even before we got the call saying he was.
An addendum to this is that, once you have found your trainer, you need to discuss any specialized training equipment that you may need. There are items such as vibration collars that may be useful. You might use a flashlight in ‘clicker’ training. You need to be aware of the added expense of these items.
Another consideration, one that didn’t occur to us until today, is finding boarding. We need to talk to our breeder about this, as some breeders offer boarding to their puppies and, obviously, that’s the best option in most cases. Otherwise, you need to call boarding kennels and find someone willing to board your animal. There are tonnes of guides on picking a good boarding kennel for your dog out there (most importantly, ask your trainer and your breeder/rescue who they might recommend) but there are, as always, extra considerations with a deaf animal.
You need to interview them and make sure that they are willing to board a deaf animal and, additionally, if they are a good match for your particular animal. This isn’t something you can wait to do until you’re going on vacation.
Imagine, if you will, someone in your family falls ill or has an accident. They are hospitalized. You are spending 24 hours a day at the hospital with your family member in the ICU. Or, even worse, you’re a single parent to your deaf dog and you are hospitalized. Who is going to look after your dog? A deaf dog differs from a hearing dog in the views of others as much as anything else. You need to have someone, somewhere, who you trust 100% to look after your dog in the event of an emergency, from the moment your dog comes home. An emergency might never arise, but wouldn’t you rather know that you’re prepared? Wouldn’t you rather know that your animal has the security of people who will know his commands?
It isn’t as simple as just anyone because your dog is deaf. Most dogs have a couple of standard commands. Sit. Stay. Down. No. Those are virtually universal, but with a deaf dog, they are useless. Waving your hands aimlessly is only going to excite the animal. Signs need to be directed and the same each time. Any dog walkers or kennels you employ need to know them.
One last consideration has to do with your vet. Most vets will work on any animal, regardless of hearing impairment, but you must find one who, along with their vet techs, is willing to learn your animal’s signs. Were there an issue that required the animal to stay overnight, your vet needs to know these things.
I’ve been so busy with Castiel that I haven’t had time to update his blog!
Deaf Dog Blog 