I thought for a change I’d talk about something I know very well

There’s been some mention of dogs for the deaf on DeafRead and if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to train dogs.

Although let me go on a brief rant: ALL DOG OWNERS SHOULD PICK UP AFTER THEIR DOGS!! Doesn’t matter who you are or who your dog is. PICK UP AFTER HIM. Jesus!

OK, that felt better. Anyway, here’s a good scenario. Teach your dog so that someone can say to him: “Go get BEG!” (or whatever your name is) and your dog will go out find where you are and bring you back to that person. To teach a dog this, you’ll need to break it down into parts.

In the first part, you will stand somewhere with a treat in your hand and at least two friends to help. The friends will say something like “Go get BEG!” and when your dog goes to you (call him at first if you need to but phase that out quickly), give him the treat.

Keep it simple and start out a few feet away from the friends, and as your dog gets the idea move a little further away. When he will go to you from across a room, throw in some complication, but shorten the distance when you do so. For example, now that your dog will go across the room to you, go back to three or four feet apart, but stand (say) just outside the doorway in the hallway so he cant’ see you even though you’re only a few feet apart. As he gets that idea, stretch out the distance.

This will probably take a couple of days of work, just do say four or five repetitions say two or three times a day. The main point is to keep it simple, successful, and fun.

You should be able to continue in this vein until he’ll go to you from a variety of places in your house. Include the backyard and other safe places as well.

OK, that’s the first part. The second part, teaching him to return to the person who sent for you in the first place, will also need to be split up into two stages. The first stage, both you and the person doing the sending need to have treats on hand. Shorten the distance back up to a few feet. (Whenever you introduce a new concept, go back to the basics for everything else in the sequence.) Have the person send the dog to you, and you give him the treat. Now you make a fuss: What is it? Who sent me? Where are we going? The person who sent him now whistles him back and treats him on the return. Go back with your dog. This part is where you need at least two other people helping; alternate which one sends him, and make sure he goes back to the right person (this is where the liberal use of treats helps the dog). And you have to physically accompany the dog back; the helper gives the treat to the dog once YOU are there as well, if he runs on ahead.

As he gets the idea, start varying things again: vary the distance/complexity (in the hall, around a corner, in another room, upstairs, downstairs, etc) and start varying the number of different helpers. When he’s good with all this, time to move onto the next phase, which is where the helpers have treats but NOT you. Again simplify the distance back down, have the helper send the dog to you, and now you make a fuss: where is it, what is it, and when the dog goes back to the sender, give him the treat (but only when you are back too; don’t have the sender give the dog the treat the moment he comes back ifyou are way behind!

Now I’ve never done this with deaf helpers, all the people who send my dogs to “fetch” me have been hearing people. But I can’t see any reason why the helpers coudln’t be deaf and make a simple sign to go fetch you. Dogs are very good at body language and will learn hand signals easily. Just not complicated ASL stuff

That’s really just a brief outline, but it’s a very useful concept, particularly once the dog learns to “fetch” you, you can later extend that concept — the dog can be taught to “fetch” you toward specific other sounds or events: someone at the door, the microwave or oven timer buzzing, etc.

One thing I should say, in my experience, the best dogs for these kind of things are dogs with a strong retrieving drive. I’ve always been partial to labradors, but of course there are many breeds (and mixes) that are happy retrievers. Individual dogs can be tested for fetching drive before deciding whether they would be suitable for this kind of training.

Hope this gives some ideas/help/insight to folks. And again if your a dog owner, just clean up after your dog. Nuff said. No one should go out to a football field and have to worry about that. Ugh.