How Do I Train a Deaf Dog

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Ty Brown with dogbehavioronline.com. We're here in Riverton, Utah today talking about how to train a dog. The topic for today's discussion is how to train a deaf dog. Now it's very difficult but very important to train a deaf dog. If you think about it, a deaf dog is living in a pretty scary and strange world to him. He has a lot of stimulation going on and nobody's there to help explain what's going on to him. And so it's important that you as a trainer of a deaf dog understand some key points that are going to help your dog navigate his way through a world that can be somewhat scary. And so there's several key things that you're going to want to do when training a deaf dog. The first thing you want to do is start out with a lot of leash training. Now the leash is a great tool because it's an effective communicator. A lot of people start out by trying to not use the leash, but then they have no way to talk to the dog, they have no way to communicate with the dog. The leash is a physical bond that you can have with your dog that can help you explain the things that you want him to do. Help him to sit, help him to come when called. The second thing you want to do as you're starting your, as you're starting working with a deaf dog is to use that leash to accompany it with some hand signals. Now dogs because they can't hear you need some way to understand what you're saying. You're going to need to use a hand signal. And people will often use this for sit, this for down, this for come, this for stay, this for no. And every time you do a hand signal accompanying it with something on the leash, for example, if I wanted the dog to sit, I would do an upward tug in the air as I gave the sit command. If I wanted the dog to lie down on command, I would use a downward hand signal as I accompany that with some leash work so that it makes sense to the dog what I'm trying to tell him. Lie down. Good boy, stay. And in doing that, the dog associates a physical act with the hand signal. And with enough repetition, the dog is going to start to associate the two together and you can simply give the hand signal and move away from the leash. The other thing you're going to want to use a lot of when training a deaf dog is treats. Treats are a great tool for a motivator, but they're also a great physical connection again between you and your dog that you have that you can use to communicate the ideas that you, and the commands that you want your dog to do. And so by using leash training, by using hand signals and by using treats, you can effectively train a deaf dog."