You might be wondering who we are.
To be honest with you, we’re just people. My name is Tay. I’m from the middle of nowhere in rural Ontario. My partner, Kelly, is from Windsor. I’m still debating what I want to do when I ‘grow up’ and Kelly is going to be attending George Brown in the fall to finish his ASL interpreter certification. We live in Toronto. We’re both animal lovers and we work minimum wage jobs. We’re not anything special.
When I moved in with Kelly, we each had one cat. I had a grey tabby named Leonardo and Kelly had a black kitty named Shinigami. For a year, we lived with our cats, watching them have a lack of love for each other. Eventually there was a sort of peace, but we didn’t think they’d ever be able to sit near one another.
After about six months living together, we started to talk about getting a dog. At first, it was just idle ‘we should get a dog…. someday.’ Then we started to get more serious about it. We started doing breed research. We wanted a ‘velcro’ dog. We wanted a dog with a high level of trainability. We wanted a large dog. We wanted a dog that wasn’t fluffy–I don’t like the idea of taking my dog to the groomer all the time and our cats do enough on the shedding front that we really didn’t need something with a heavy undercoat to shed everywhere. We didn’t want a dog that would be extremely hyperactive. Most of all, we wanted a dog that we could love and who would want to be around us all the time.
We settled on one of two breeds. Either a great dane or a viszla. Viszlas are more active, but they had the added benefit of being a ‘scentless’ dog. We started looking for a dog, idly, not sure when would be the right time to get one but knowing that we would find the right dog for us.
In the meantime, we adopted two more cats, DHD and MALP, Russian blue-Siamese mix sisters. Both of them are tiny little things, the size of four month old kittens at most, but they’re full grown. We learned to deal with dietary restrictions in the form of MALP’s rice allergy. We did research into the care and feeding of giant breed dogs.
Now we’re embarking on the adventure of Castiel’s life and we couldn’t be happier.
Deaf Dog Blog 
Congratulations to all of you on this decision. He’s beautiful and looks like Drummer although hard to tell yet as we never saw him till he was seven months and 110 pounds but all the signs are there that he’s going to be a very big sweety. Tay just remember all the stories you heard as a child about his weight and jumping and raising his bowls etc. and I’m sure you’ll do fine. Remember always that he is a Great Dane first and a deaf dog second and I’m sure you’ll do the best for him. Please read up on stomach torsion etc. and be always alert to it. One of the leaders here has a beautiful young female Harliquin who she almost lost in the fall, luckily the Vet caught things just barely in time and all is now well. If you possibly can get health insurance for the big guy cause although they’re great (literally) when something does go wrong it happens fast and in a very big way. Happy homecoming to you Castiel and welcome to the family!!!!!!
I’ve done a TONNE of reading on gastric torsion. Elevated feeders are no longer the recommendation. There was a study released in the past year or two by Perdue that said that elevated feeding may be an actual risk factor and that raw feeding virtually eliminates (though not COMPLETELY eliminates) the risk of torsion.
Hey! I have just subscribed and think Castiel is beautiful! I also have a deaf dog and have just started blogging about him. It is great to hear other people’s points of view and experiences.
Hello,
My boyfriend and I have recently adopted a deaf dog and I stumbled across your blog while researching. I hope to start a blog soon as well.
Our puppy is a German Coolie x and we believe she was dumped by a farmer so she is very active and likes to herd my parents labradors which they really don’t appreciate!! Keep up the good work and I can’t wait to read more about Castiel’s adventures.
P.S how long did it take for Castiel and the cats to start getting along as we have a white cat called Lily who is really not fond of our puppy (Mackenzie)