An amusing coincidence.

by beanalreasa

In case you did not know – a few weeks ago, my family got a new dog: a Dalmatian puppy.

We named him Phineas.

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He has beautiful blue eyes, doesn’t he?

He is incredibly sweet-tempered and probably the calmest Dalmatian we’ve ever owned (and V and I have had 5 other Dals over the last 25 years)

And yet, what’s new for us is that it turns out that Phineas is 100% deaf.

While deafness in Dalmatians is a rather common occurrence – something like 30% of Dals have some level of hearing loss/deafness – we have never had a deaf Dal ourselves.

So, as you might imagine, I have been doing research on how to train a deaf dog.

We’ve begun to learn sign language.  We’ve invested in a vibrating collar.

And my latest goal has been to find a local dog training program/facility that can assist us in training our wonderfully calm, incredibly intelligent puppy – who just happens to be deaf.

While it would seem that there are plenty of trainers and facilities that offer specialized training for deaf dogs in California or Louisiana, there seems to be a dearth of actual trainers/facilities offering basic obedience training that encompasses deaf dogs in Central Florida.
Well, after many calls and emails and running around, I was excited to have finally heard back from a *local* training facility this morning.

So while V  was checking through the website this evening

-and reading the customer reviews –

he found this review at the top of the list:

Tabitha ******* ***** —5 star
I wanted to wait until our dogs settled in before giving my review….

Before we took Loki and Odin to [name of dog training facility], they were showing aggressive behaviors towards other animals, especially dogs, they were awful on leashes, and when someone came over they were jumping all over them.

They boarded and trained for three weeks… While at boarding Loki took to other dogs very well, he loves playing in a pack of dogs… Odin is now tolerant of dogs-he does great one-on-one but doesn’t care for a group of dogs. . They have some more work to do … but are so much better than they were. [W]hen I come in the door they are calmly waiting in their “place” until I call them out, and they don’t jump when they get to me.

I am so glad we took them to [training facility], it’s the best decision we could have made. Thank you so much for taking the time to work with [Loki and Odin]!

~~~

I just had to laugh…

Especially at the description of Loki and Odin being awful on leashes or jumping all over people who visit them.

I was also amused at the description of their personalities-

how Loki is sociable

but

Odin is only now tolerant of others, and does better one-on-one

 LOL

 

Though I could have told Tabitha that working with Loki and Odin requires a lot of patience

…but it’s always worth taking the time to work with Loki and Odin.

😀