How to tell if your dog is deaf

The story of Jacob, a deaf Boston Terrier, could help you determine your dog's hearing ability. But how can you tell if your dog is deaf or is not just behaving badly and blatantly ignoring you?

In addition to being shown to a veterinary hospital, which performs an acoustic response test, where electrodes are used to assess the acoustic performance of your dogs There is no other confirmatory test available. Although the BAER test is painless, quick, and easy, the money you shell out for a rather expensive test could better pay for a teaching tool for your potentially deaf dog, such as a vibrating ring. There are various rudimentary but adequate tests you can perform at home to check your suspicion.

Such techniques include observing the behavior of your responsive dogs(or, more appropriately, "unresponsive") When your dog is sleeping (for example, when you come home from work), call his / her name loudly, or clap your hands. It is a good sign of deafness if he or she continues to sleep. Make sure you are not perfumed or standing close to your dog to smell your scent. Sometimes the plume of air created when passing by your dogs enough to make his sensitive nose feel. Have the assistant walk into another room, out of sight of you and your dogs... Ask a helper to create a sound, such as a can of coins thundering or a metal pot hitting (sounds should not include stamping your foot on the floor, as the vibrations created by stamping will certainly catch your attention. dogs and make the results inaccurate). These sounds should not be pleasant as your dog may react by flattening his ears or pressing his body against the ground. If your dogs there is no reaction at all, she is most likely deaf.

If your dog accidentally turns his ears and head as if he heard something and was confused about where the sound was coming from, he may be partially or one-sided deaf. What should you do when you are convinced your dog is deaf? First, you and your dog should visit and consult a veterinarian. Your veterinarian will examine your ear canal. dogs through the otoscope to check that the outer ear has developed accordingly and there is no abnormality. In some cases, when there are problems such as a deformity of the outer ear, or an ear infection, your deafness dogs can be cured after eliminating these causes. Other times, as with Jacob, the deaf Boston Terrier, they are forced to live in a quiet world.

Your veterinarian will be able to advise you on your options and he or she may also refer you to a specialist for a BAER test. Although the BAER test can be costly, it is a definitive and reliable test. Knowing the degree of your deafness dogs can help you adjust your teaching methods to fit your needs dogs.

Here are some reasons why you want to do the BAER test: you are unsure, your dog is one-sided or deaf on both sides (one ear cannot hear or both). The BAER test can determine exactly which ear is not hearing exactly, which would be difficult to establish with rudimentary test methods done at home or in the clinic. In some cases, your dog may retain the ability to hear only at certain frequencies. Recently adapted BAER tests can test your hearing ability dogs at specific frequencies. You need a test to confirm your assumptions for peace of mind. You may be interested in learning about deafness if you are breeding dogs that are prone to congenital / hereditary deafness. When you have established that your dog is actually deaf, you must inform your breeder that your dog has inherited deafness and the breeder in charge will stop breeding, or decide not to breed them altogether. You, as the owner, are responsible to ensure that your dogs there were no offspring and must neuter / neuter him / her if you have not already done so. Many owners find that their dogs deaf people go through a tough decision if they want to take on the responsibility of caring for a deaf dog. The following is a list of important responsibilities that you will need to take on for the length of your stay. dogs with you. Your dog should never be off a leash anywhere that is not completely fenced off. If your dog runs away, you will not be able to call him back. Plus, if your dog does run away, he risks getting run over. vehicle because she cannot hear the approaching movement. This also means that unless you have a fenced-in yard where your dog can exercise or play, you will need to be active enough to personally train with your dog every day. If you've bought a vibrating ring for your dog, the only way to get her attention when she's away from you is to walk up to her and touch her shoulder.

Stomping, using a bottle, or throwing things at it can startle and disturb her. You will need to establish a calm behavior of your dogs because she will be very anxious. Teaching the deaf dogs can be time consuming, especially in the beginning when you have to make it clear that she needs to perform gestures. Your deaf dog will never be a good guard dog. In fact, you will have to take on the responsibility of the caregiver over the course of her life. Some are deaf dogs as quiet as a mouse, while others are deaf dogs bark constantly. Teaching a deaf dog not to bark can be difficult. However, there are many methods you can use to wean your dog from this behavior. You must be attentive to your dog, who is left alone with other dogs, even if he knows them well. His inability to hear their barking or growling can lead her to be bitten. Jacob, a deaf Boston, was once bitten by the American Bulldog Reba, who was so old she could barely move. One day Jacob went to where Reba was resting, and she growled at him. He did not see or hear that she had warned him, and in a split second she got up and bit him on the head. No one would have thought that the quiet Reba, who barely moved, could hurt like that, but if Jacob had been able to hear her, he would have escaped the danger. Although the treatment is deaf dogs harder than normal, it certainly does not mean impossible. Patience and diligence in learning are the keys to success. You will find that his learning is only limited by your imagination and creativity to find ways to communicate with him. Remember, the only disability your dog has is hearing, not his mental ability to learn, and certainly not his ability to love you unconditionally. Treatment of the well-adjusted deaf dogs can be an inert and rewarding experience. In this article, dogs are referred to as "s / he" only because I write my articles thinking of Jacob, the deaf Boston Terrier.

Sometimes the owners of their pets are faced with a rather unpleasant problem - deafness in dogs. If this happens, chances are your four-legged friend has a hearing problem. There are both congenital deafness in dogs and acquired.

Unilateral deafness in dogs

Deafness can be partial or complete. Hearing problems in an animal are rather difficult to determine, especially if deafness is unilateral. The inability to hear is sometimes of a neurological nature, and sometimes other reasons. Your pet may be deaf in one or two ears - this is unilateral or bilateral hearing loss.

If the animal is hard of hearing, it should be shown to an experienced professional. The veterinarian will be able to assess the quality of hearing by sound stimuli. A deep and thorough examination may be needed to determine the cause of your pet's hearing loss. A problem with only one ear can be diagnosed with confidence only in veterinary clinics using special equipment. People who do not breed dogs may not immediately notice deafness.

Causes of deafness

The most common causes of deafness are ear injuries or infections. Some puppies are already born with a hearing loss - this is called congenital deafness. Usually, the puppy begins to respond to sound stimuli 2 weeks after birth. It is not difficult for experienced breeders to determine this pathology. They identify deaf puppies before giving them to new owners.

There are many reasons why a puppy or an adult cannot hear. Let's list some of them:

• if there are abnormalities and the auricle, auditory ossicle, middle ear, eardrum are not functioning correctly;
• when the ear canal is damaged or the eardrum is ruptured;
• a neurological reason - if the auditory nerve does not fulfill its functions, the inner ear has abnormalities or there are problems with the functioning of the brain;
• heredity;
• eating toxic substances;
• old age;
• trauma;
• ear infections;
• sulfur that has blocked the ear canal.

If your pet stops responding to your voice, commands, loud noise, screaming - do not try to treat the dog yourself, reading advice on forums on the Internet. The reasons why the animal has hearing problems can only be determined by the veterinary clinic. If the dog has become hard of hearing, careful diagnosis and treatment will be required.

Top Symptoms Indicating Hearing Problems in Your Dog

In addition to hearing, a dog can rely on sight and smell. Those animals that are accustomed to deafness with childhood, do not feel flawed and not like other brethren. Their hearing loss does not bother them. Unfortunately, getting your pet's hearing back will be nearly impossible. The owner should take this for granted and not try to regain hearing by any means.

If the dog is injured, deafness can occur immediately. This will be clearly visible and understandable. In the case when the pet loses hearing gradually, the owner may not detect it for a long time and may not react to it properly.

Here are some tips on how to understand that your pet has become hard of hearing:

• he constantly touches his ears with his paw and shakes his head;
• does not react in any way to any sound stimuli;
• the owner notices that the animal does not follow his commands and does not respond to the nickname;
• shows attention to you only if you are in her field of vision;
• the animal began to sleep more;
• the dog wakes up not from voice or noise, but from tactile contact;
• if you touch a deaf dog during sleep, it shudders or is frightened;
• the pet has become less active, ignores toys, avoids games;
• partial disorientation in space and confusion of consciousness.

Some breeds have a hereditary predisposition to hearing problems. The same breeds, for example, include the Boston Terrier, German Shepherd, Dachshund, English Bulldog and others.

Diagnosis of the disease

You can find out that a dog has lost his hearing by obvious and indirect signs... The obvious ones include the complete disregard for animals of sound stimuli. Indirect signs include general deviations from the usual behavior of the animal - longer sleep, decreased activity. If the hearing loss is unilateral, it is very difficult to notice the problem. To determine the exact reasons that caused the hearing loss, you need to see a specialist.

Neurological examinations and timely examinations of your pet will help you understand why he is losing his hearing. An owner trying to independently determine the cause of his pet's deafness may lose the time it takes to successfully correct the problem if it can be corrected. This applies primarily to injuries and infectious diseases.

Treatment

Today, unfortunately, it is almost impossible to cure deafness in a dog - all therapeutic and surgical methods will not give results. The help you can give your pet is to halt progressive hearing loss and affect the quality of the remaining hearing loss. Positive results of treatment can only be if the cause of the hearing loss is the external auditory canal blocked by sulfur and dirt.

Sometimes it is possible to preserve part of the hearing when the cause of the disease lies in infectious otitis media. It is generally impossible to cure congenital deafness in a four-legged friend. A puppy who is born completely or partially deaf will never be able to recognize a sound wave. Sometimes, on very rare occasions, hearing aids can help solve the problem. But such special devices are very expensive and often do not pay off.

Treatment of deafness in dogs is prescribed only after a comprehensive study and study of the test results. Sometimes the cause is, fortunately, easily removable. The accumulated wax and wax are removed from the ear opening and the animal gains hearing.

Clean the ear opening with the utmost care so as not to damage eardrum... Cleaning is carried out by a veterinarian using cotton applicators. Very dirty auricles sometimes have to be cleaned under general anesthesia.

With inflammatory and infectious diseases the dog is given antibiotics, and the ears are buried with special drugs. To relieve an animal of bilateral deafness, they can prescribe drug treatment, surgical intervention. If these actions do not lead to the desired results, a hearing aid may be recommended.

It will take some time and a lot of patience to get back to normal life with a hearing impaired animal. It is not so much the dog that should be retrained, but its owner. For example, a very "aged" animal and so strive to reduce its once active lifestyle to a passive and comfortable one. Such a dog will not experience significant anxiety with complete or partial hearing loss. The owner is obliged to do everything possible to help the pet adapt to the new realities of his life.

Sometimes the owner is deceived and thinks that his hearing has improved. For example, a dog may not react to a shaking of the floor, but not to the sound of footsteps. Therefore, it is better to help the dog adapt by following a few simple recommendations.

1. The dog must be monitored so as not to accidentally harm it. The pet can "get tangled" underfoot, lie in the wrong place or interfere during work. Deafness will not allow him to hear sounds around him and correctly assess the impending danger.
2. A deaf dog should not be left on the street unattended. She is taken out for a walk and on the street only with a leash. Running freely is only allowed in a fenced-in area or in areas where nothing poses a threat to health. You can walk with your pet in the field or in a well-viewed park space, where there are no other aggressive animals.
3. A hearing impaired dog needs daily exercise. Train her to react to your movements, teach her to understand your gestures. They are highly trainable and will soon be able to understand your commands through "eye" contact.
4. Use tactile contact with your pet when leaving or coming to inform the pet. Wake up the dog in the same way, invite him to food.
5. Be sure to attach a bell to the dog's collar when going for a walk. The dog can get lost, and calling it is useless. By the sound of the bell, you can determine the location of the animal. Electronic tracking sensors can be used these days. With the help of them, you can track the movement if the animal is lost.

Deafness of a dog is not a sentence for an animal. Help your four-legged friend to better adapt to new conditions. Love, care and patience will help ensure your pet a comfortable and happy life.

About the author: Ekaterina Alekseevna Soforova

Deafness may be due to problems in the transmission of sound to the inner ear or to impairment of the delicate parts. inner ear converting a sound signal into an electrical one.

In addition, functional impairments may occur. auditory nerve that transmits a signal to the brain or to the area of ​​the brain responsible for hearing.

Common symptoms of deafness in a dog

Dog breeders often do not notice the deafness of the dog, believing that she simply does not want to follow the commands. The signs of the disease are as follows:

• If only one ear is affected, then the dog continues to hear, but cannot determine the direction to the sound source.
• The dog does not respond to a sound that has recently piqued its interest.
• Your dog has a hard time finding you when you call him for a walk.

Causes of deafness in a dog

Possible causes of deafness are as follows:

• Blockage of the ear canal foreign body or discharge resulting from otitis media.
• Damage to the tympanic membrane.
• Damage to the auditory hammer or rupture of the fluid sac in the middle ear.
• Changes in the middle ear as a result of aging.
• Anatomical disorders associated with the abnormal development of the body.

Dogs at risk

Deafness is a well-known problem in young Dalmatians as well as in breeds:

• boston, bull terriers and fox terriers,
• redhead and border collie,
• cocker spaniels,
• Doberman Pinschers,
• german shepherd,
• Old English Shepherd Dogs.

How to proceed

If you suspect your dog has a hearing problem, then a simple test should be performed to check how your dog responds to sounds of varying volume and pitch. If the test shows that the dog does not hear everything, then immediately show it to the veterinarian.

The doctor examines the condition of the dog's ears for obvious causes of the condition before proceeding with the hearing test. If the appropriate equipment is available, verification can be carried out using electronic testing.

Treating deafness in a dog

If the ear canal is blocked by a foreign body or secretions from otitis media, the veterinarian will clean it.

Anatomical changes cannot be treated. If your puppy has intermittent deafness, you can help by teaching him to follow hand commands. It is very helpful to seek the advice of dog breeders who also have deaf dogs.

Hearing in dogs is the second most important sense organ and plays an essential role in the exchange of information with the environment. Hearing impairment is a complete or partial decrease in the ability to perceive sounds. It is observed in dogs of different breeds and age groups. Distinguish between partial (hearing loss) and complete hearing loss (deafness).

In veterinary medicine, the following types of hearing impairment are distinguished: conductive, neurosensory and mixed.

Conductive hearing impairment
These are pathological conditions in which the process of conducting sound waves from the external environment to the structures of the ear suffers, transforming these vibrations into electrical impulses. Since the process of sound perception already begins from the level of the inner ear (cochlea), the substrate of conductive hearing impairment is damage, dysfunction or underdevelopment of the structures of the outer and middle ear, i.e. auricle, external auditory canal, eardrum and ossicles.

The pathologies of these structures can be different. For example, when unfavorable external factors influence the developing fetus, the puppy may be born with malformations of the outer ear - the absence or gross underdevelopment of the auricles. Quite often, this defect is combined with complete atresia of the auditory canal - the absence of the external opening of the auditory canal.

In this case, the external auditory canal can also be significantly narrowed (stenosis). In all these cases, the possibility of transmitting sound vibrations to the structures of the auditory analyzer, where the process of sound perception takes place, is sharply reduced.

More often hereditary or congenital defects of the sound-conducting apparatus are found in its acquired dysfunctions. The most significant of them are inflammatory lesions of the middle ear, the so-called otitis media. They are the main cause of conductive hearing loss in dogs. Complications of otitis media can be a violation of the integrity of the tympanic membrane, otosclerosis, partial destruction of the auditory ossicles.

Sensorineural hearing impairment
These are pathologies in which the process of sound perception suffers. This type of hearing impairment is more common and more severe than conductive hearing impairment. It is based on damage, dysfunction, underdevelopment and other pathological changes in the cochlea, auditory nerve fibers and centers nervous system responsible for analyzing audio signals.

The substrate of these hearing impairments is usually localized not at the level of the outer and middle ear, but in the inner ear or in the brain.

The main causes of sensorineural hearing impairment in dogs are:
- hereditary diseases of the organs of hearing, characteristic, in particular, for Dalmatians, bull terriers, Argentine dogs, etc.;
- infectious and viral diseases transferred by the mother during pregnancy (herpesvirus infection, toxoplasmosis);
- asphyxia of newborns, intracranial birth trauma;
- bacterial meningitis/ meningoencephalitis;
- drugs with an ototoxic effect (for example, aminoglycoside antibiotics).

The most significant factor in the pathogenesis of sensorineural hearing impairment is the use of ototoxic antibiotics of the aminoglycoside series. Currently, the mechanism of action of one or another antibiotic on the organ of hearing, the nature and localization of the lesion it causes, have been well studied. It is known that kanamycin and neomycin act mainly on the cochlea, and streptomycin - on the sensory epithelium of the vestibular apparatus. Gentamicin affects both the cochlea and the vestibular apparatus. The ototoxic effect of antibiotics may be due to their combined use, inadequate infusion therapy and the use of lasix, which has a direct pathological effect on the structures of the inner ear.

Mixed forms of hearing impairment
They are a combination of the above two violations.

When diagnosing hearing impairment, it should always be borne in mind that more often than not, hearing loss is based on several causes that have a combined effect. The question of the combination, severity and exposure of individual factors remains open today.

Examination of a sick animal begins with anamnesis, a thorough clinical examination of the auricle and examination of the ear canal using an otoscope and an endoscope. However, these methods can only identify the causes of conductive hearing impairment.

To determine the functional status of the inner ear structures (cochlea, hair cells, basilar membrane), various audiometric methods are used: registration of otoacoustic emission, registration of short-latency auditory evoked potentials (ABR) and impedance measurement. Unfortunately, these techniques are not yet common in veterinary medicine.

This method based on the registration of an acoustic response, which is a reflection of the normal functioning of the auditory receptor. These are extremely weak sound vibrations generated by the cochlea that can be recorded in the ear canal using a high-sensitivity microphone. Oscillations are the result of active mechanical processes occurring in the organ of hearing, namely in the outer hair cells. The active movements of the latter are enhanced due to positive feedback and are transmitted to the basilar membrane, inducing reverse traveling waves that reach the foot plate of the stapes and lead to the corresponding oscillatory process the chain of the auditory ossicles, the tympanic membrane and the air column in the external auditory canal.
When choosing methods for correcting hearing impairments, one should remember about the variety of factors that cause this or that pathology, and their possible combination. Treatment should be aimed at eliminating all existing causes. Correction of conductive auditory disorders, as a rule, involves the operative expansion of the ear canal, as well as the relief of inflammation of the outer and middle ear. Usually, with these pathologies, the prognosis is from favorable to cautious.

In the case of sensorineural and mixed forms of hearing impairment, research and clinical experience prove the feasibility of infusion therapy with vasoactive and antihypoxic agents. Such drugs as vinpocetine, pentoxifylline, cerebrolysin, piracetam, are used during the first 10 days (intravenously, drip), gradually increasing the dose of the drug from the 1st to the 4th day and maintaining a constant therapeutic dose from the 5th to the 10th days of infusion therapy. In the future, they switch to intramuscular and oral use of drugs. The total duration of the course of treatment is up to 12 months.

In the treatment of sensorineural hearing loss of various etiologies, it is possible to use histamine-like drugs that have a specific effect on the microcirculation of the inner ear and normalize the pressure of the endolymph in the labyrinth. For this purpose, in particular, betahistine is used. The drug should be taken during or after feed intake to prevent possible adverse effects on the gastric mucosa. Contraindications - peptic ulcer stomach and bronchial asthma.

V.V. SHUMAKOV, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Internal Non-infectious Diseases, Surgery and Obstetrics, State Agricultural Academy named after D.K. Belyaeva, Ivanovo