Dear Tim & Clare,
I read your article / advert in the Agility Eye, which came at a very appropriate time for me!
I have a seven year old WSD, and had suspected for some time that she was losing her hearing.
I felt it was such a young age for this to happen, and kept telling myself that her making mistakes
and barking frantically when doing agility was down to my bad handling !!!
Anyway, I finally took the plunge, and in October drove her up to the Animal Health Trust in Suffolk to have her ears tested. It was there that I found out some very interesting facts.
One of these was that Border Collies are more prone to deafness than any other breed, and that there is
a special research project that they are doing regarding this. Also I was told that BC and WSD puppies that are taken to them for hearing tests will have perfect hearing as puppies, but could possibly go deaf from as early an age as four or five years. They have no explanation for this as yet, and feel it maybe something in the genes, but could give me no reason or cause for this.
To cut a long story short, Kat, my dog was tested, and found to be virtually stone deaf in her left ear,
and has lost 85% of her hearing in her right ear. Despite this fact, she is a beautiful, perfectly healthy bitch, with lovely clean ears. They could not give me a cause for the hearing loss,
and I was so interested in what I thought was a very strange phenomenon is such a young dog,
they went on to tell me that they “see” and diagnose more Border Collies than any other dog for deafness!!
(Did You Know That? - I had never heard of it before!).
Well the upshot of all this is that I now have to re-train both Kate and myself to adapt to her new hearing challenge. I will no longer expect as much out of her as she was agility trained with a lot of verbal commands. Now I realise that I am going to have to use the position of my body and my shoulders a lot more - that is why I need to be retrained in my approach to agility as well.
Fortunately, I am not a very competitive person who “has to win at all costs”
I do agility to have fun with Kate, and to have a day out in the fresh air with my daughter and my 3 dogs.
If I ever get a Rosette, that is the icing on the cake,
but the exercise, and the quality of time together as a family is far more important to me.
I would be more than happy if a Deaf Dogs League Table starts up.
It should be quite good fun to get in touch with other handlers who are “owned” by a Deaf Dog.
It is quite amazing how well our dogs DO adapt to their hearing loss.
I only know about my Kate who had perfect hearing, but now, bless her, she has almost nothing.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity of getting in touch with you and telling my story.
She is such a beautiful dog and her story needs to be told.
With Kind Regards
