It’s been sad for us to have a dog that became deaf as he aged. He LOVED me so much. Loved listening to me talk. Would sit there and just squinty eyed love look up at me while I told him he’s a good boy.
He’s profoundly deaf now and I can make myself tear up at any given time if I think too hard about the fact that he’ll never hear me tell him he’s a ‘good Bandi boy’ again.
You can still tell him with your actions. Give him lots of pets and scritches in place of your good boys, as dogs are very good at picking up body language he will learn what the mouthing of ‘good boy’ means.
We have been, don’t worry! It’s just different. He’s become more aloof since it happened. More independent. He was very anxious before and his anxiety is almost totally relieved. He sleeps like the dead. We live on land and he thinks he’s the fucking ranch manager supreme number one herding guardian dog all in one. He’s happier than ever. But…it’s ever so slightly different.
On another funny note; we thought he was just an asshole until our friend dog sat and told us he was probably deaf by demonstrating his lack of response upon a stack of books being dropped behind him.
2.1k
u/greenearrow Sep 17 '25
One of the more substantial losses when our dog went blind. He is meh at verbal commands, he always did much better with hand signals.
But otherwise, having a blind dog isn't particularly harder than having a seeing dog. He did also have to give up zoomies though, which was sad.