Training a deaf dog Part 3

Simba has now reached a plateau in his training. He has been coming in once a week for almost two months.

It is Simba who has decided that his training is staying on the plateau rather than advancing. He knows what we are doing and has figured out how things work. But like all dogs he has alpha drive that makes him resistant to giving up power unless he is convinced that he needs to respect his pack leader.

Simba is the first deaf dog I have worked with that did not start as a puppy or was pure herding breed or mix. And since he has terrier in his mix, he is counter training.

When training a deaf dog to just hand signals, we are dependent on the dog looking to see the hand sign to obey. We know that Simba has wider vision than a human. What we don’t know is exactly how wide it is.

When I start a dog as a puppy I have a blank sheet of paper to write on. So we establish looking at the owner for direction at the time in a dog’s life when pleasing its human is the most important value the dog has. So getting that puppy to constantly look at his human is easy.

In herding dogs, their genetic makeup includes a natural tendency to constantly look at the human for direction. This is one of the reasons that people often own a deaf herding dog that they do not know is deaf. The dog has learned to read the humans body language for direction.

So people have a dog that obeys when it is looking at them, but not when the dog cannot see them. They do not make the connection. They assume the dog is not obeying when in fact it just didn’t see them to “hear” what they were saying.

But with Simba only being part herding dog I have noticed that he does not look at his human as much a pure herding breed would do. And since he did not start as a puppy we could not imprint looking for directions at the start.

If we give a command by hand sign that he does not see, it would not be fair to correct him for ignoring the command. I suspect that Simba is taking unfair advantage of us.

If he does not think we are sure he saw the hand sign, he can ignore it knowing that he is not likely to be corrected. This allows him to be selective in obeying commands.

One of the reasons I suspect this is behavior that I saw in his last session. Simba was taken outside on a 20 foot line. He was given the command “come on.” That meant that he could be twenty feet in front of, behind or either side of her. But the line is always slack.

To make sure the dog is paying attention, we walk and turn randomly rather than in a straight line. If the dog is not paying attention when you get to the end of the line, the dog gets gently corrected.

Simba was perfect the whole time. Mom would turn and go the other direction. There were numerous times where it was clear that Simba did not see her turn. But every single time he would turn before the line came off the ground.

Then I noticed when he turned he would know exactly where she would be. He did not have to look for her, he knew.

He was tracking her by scent. He doesn’t have to look for her; he already knows where she is at. So he has figured out how not to take corrections for not paying attention. Therefore when he is in a position to ignore hand signals without a correction happening automatically, he takes advantage of her sense of fair play.

This is going to change soon. Simba does not know this, but he is getting a vibrating collar for Christmas. The first thing he will learn is to look for her immediately whenever he feels two short vibrations. Two taps will mean look at me for directions. And if he doesn’t look there won’t be any doubt he “heard” the look at me command so he will be fairly corrected.

I may be training Simba, but Simba is teaching me things too.

Doug