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He’s equally solid on both the visual and verbal because we usually use them both, though we rely more heavily on the verbal. The visual cues were basic obedience cues, totally unrelated to ASL. In Cooper’s case, we trained with a combo of verbal and visual cues. You can read an interesting summary of recent research here, but the gist is that, when learning something new, visual works best for dogs. ASL for Dogs: Getting startedįirst, it’s helpful to know that dogs learn better visually than verbally. So, what do you do during bath time or pool time in the summer? What if she loses one and we have to wait for a replacement? Or, since we don’t know the cause of her hearing loss, what if it’s degenerative? So, we all decided right off the bat we were going to learn a new language together! Violet’s the quickest learner of us all, I think! But, we realized we need to incorporate Cooper, too, and that’s where our sign language journey begins. This is my absolute biggest anxiety right now because I just want her to hear! I want her to start speech and listening therapy! It makes me anxious not being able to DO SOMETHING to help her.īut, while we wait for all those pieces of the puzzle to fall in line, we’re focusing on the one thing we can all progress on together: learning sign language!Įven though the hearing aids will help Astrid hear, we need to learn ASL as a family because, for one thing, she won’t be able to wear them all the time. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve likely seen her Doc Band!)īut all of it–the therapies, the hearing aids–screeched to a sudden stop because her ENT appointment was March 12, and the state closed on March 15. (She does have some other developmental delays that don’t relate to the topic of this post, but we’re getting physical therapy and such at the same time. She’ll receive listening therapy and speech therapy and occupational therapy if we need it, all through the state program. She will get hearing aids, and those will help immensely. We hooked up with our state’s health department, which provides an impressive number of services for kiddos 0-3 with developmental challenges and started aligning support services, one of which is an American Sign Language teacher. They scheduled a follow-up screen in March to try to refine the sounds she could and couldn’t hear–it’s tough in an infant since she can’t tell us anything–and between the two appointments, I started researching everything I could. Mamas want to protect, and this was something I couldn’t keep her from.
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I worried about what it meant for her and for her future, for all the things that were suddenly thrust completely out of my control. I felt so sad that she couldn’t hear birds chirping, that she couldn’t hear Violet singing to her, that she couldn’t hear me whisper, “I love you,” as I tucked her in at night.
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At that appointment, we discovered Astrid has mild-to-moderate hearing loss in both ears. They referred us to a pediatric audiologist who could see her at the end of January. She spent nine days in the NICU, and during that time, she failed her newborn hearing screen. Last November, our daughter Astrid was born. Why am I teaching my hearing dog American Sign Language? Choosing ASL rather than arbitrary obedience cues makes sense, too, because a deaf dog needs a lot more guidance than a hearing dog, so you need more signs at your disposal. Makes sense, right? A deaf dog needs to learn hand signals, no question.
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Most–dare I say all?–of the posts I could find on teaching dogs ASL worked on the premise that the dog was deaf. Otherwise, here’s where the backstory starts, and I think this is the most important thing to know at the outset: Cooper isn’t deaf. So, if you’re just here to read about sign language cues for dogs, skip ahead to the ASL for Dogs header below. Hello, friends! Let me just insert this quick note up right up front: This post requires a good bit of back story.