Positively Success Story: Marley
We rescued Marley, a double merle deaf Australian Shepherd, when she was just under a year old. She was competing with available puppies at a rescue, and we were the only ones that considered her. We found out she was caught as a feral dog in the Northern Minnesota woods with another dog.
Never having been in a house before, she was clueless about the housebreaking training ( I remember my husband saying she may never get housebroken) , nevermind the stairs -- we had to carry her for a while. Eating from a food dish was new to her, and she was generally skddish of people, especially men.
To this day, she still struggles a bit with reading other dogs cues and has no interest in toys whatsoever! We went to obedience classes, working with our deaf girl like our hearing dogs in the past. Our then-11+ yr old Aussie wasn't impressed with her, but was patient. Marley is now 8 or so. She is housebroken 🙂
Many obedience classes later, she has also been a registered dog through Pet Partners, for the last 6 yrs, as a Therapy Dog. She has helped share stories to educate people of more responsible dog breeding by avoiding double merle breeding, rescuing dogs, working with deaf dogs, Therapy Dog work, as well as showing any dog can be trianed!
We have since rescued our second deaf Great Dane at 8 weeks. When I hear people in obedience classes saying how their dog can't do it, I remind them that if a deaf dog can, theirs can too.
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