I\u2019ve sat down with Shadow and asked her why the barking? She didn\u2019t reply. When I asked her again she still didn\u2019t respond. Then the penny began to drop. She couldn\u2019t hear me. Mum had the same problem when she took Shadow into the garden. Mum went back out of the side gate so she could fetch Aristotle. Shadow waited at the gate for her but Mum then came out through the back door. Mum called to her and she didn\u2019t respond. She went nearer and called again, still nothing. It was only when Mum gently tapped Shadow\u2019s side that she had any idea that Mum was there. Shadow seems to have gone deaf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mum gave Shadow\u2019s ears a good examination to see if they were blocked. One looks completely clear and the other was quite waxy. We got out the cotton wool and some warm water and Mum set to work to give Shadow\u2019s ear a really thorough clean. It\u2019s too early to know if it will have helped her at all, but as the other one wasn\u2019t blocked but she still can\u2019t seem to hear through it, we aren\u2019t optimistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mum says it means she really needs to learn some new techniques for how best to help Shadow. Obviously we want to get to the point where Shadow can be in the office next to Mum and that will help. There is more than that though. We go through our life enjoying being told we\u2019re a good dog when we do something right. If we can\u2019t hear, then we don\u2019t know you are praising us. Mum says she needs to remember to show Shadow she is good through touch, rather than sound. She is thinking about other implications too. Do let us know if you have any ideas as we want Shadow to be as happy as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Love<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wilma<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’ve been asking Shadow ‘why the barking?’ Now we have something of an answer, but we don’t know what we can do to fix it.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[118,27],"class_list":["post-23261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-health","tag-shadow","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alfiesdiary.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}