Harvey's Hearing

[Guest PipDG]

Five year old white and blue boy Harvey went for a drive today to the vet hospital in a nearby town to have his hearing tested.The technician decided he was calm enough that he didn't need sedating, so my husband held him while I held a pair of headphones over his ears. He was brilliant and stood there calmly the whole time.

 

The test was interesting. Beforehand the technician stuck several different wires into his skull using thin little needles. Harvey only whined very slightly when the last one went in. The wires measured his brain waves as they responded to the noises going through the headphones. The technician played a series of clicks through each ear, and the results came up as lines on his computer monitor. Standing by Harvey's head I could hear the clicking noises. The first click was in his 'good' left ear, and you could see him clearly responding. Turns out the hearing in his left ear is perfect. The right ear was completely different - you could see that the line stayed essentially flat, with no peaks when the clicking noises were made. It was only when the technician turned the sound right up to 110 decibels that his brain slightly registered it. The technician also tried whistling loudly while Harvey wasn't looking, and he would turn to his 'good' left side to try to identify the source of the sound.

 

So now we know what we had suspected - Harvey is pretty much deaf in one ear. Usually with white dogs it's due to a lack of melanin, but the hearing loss is usually total and Harvey does have some limited hearing in his white ear. It could be that the loss is due to trauma or infection, but his ears look physically healthy at present and he didn't show any signs of balance issues. If we wanted to find out more we would have had to have sedated him and carried out more tests, such as imaging. We didn't do that because there doesn't really seem to be any need.

 

Harvey never really raced that well, and he liked to run wide. If he couldn't hear dogs coming up on his right side then that would explain wanting to be on the outside during a race. Now we know that his ability to hear us from a distance will be less we will get a shepherd's whistle. We will also have to be very choosy about where we let him off leash. There are very few places around here that I would be prepared to take that risk.

 

All up the hearing problem doesn't really matter to us. We love Harvey anyway! It was an interesting process to go through though and handy to know.

Pip

[robinw]

Cool! I work for a company that designs and manufacturers that equipment. I have never heard of it being used on dogs.

[spottydog]

Really interesting!

[Guest PipDG]

Cool! I work for a company that designs and manufacturers that equipment. I have never heard of it being used on dogs.

That's really interesting! It seems to be a fairly specialised thing here in New Zealand - I think this vet may be the only one doing it. He certainly loves dogs!

[Brandiandwe]

Are you also starting with training him using sign language as well? I've seen some startlingly good results with dogs who are completely deaf and included it with my dogs when I thought about my wanting them to obey even if they couldn't hear me (STOP or WAIT on the side of a busy road if, worst case scenario, they got away, then saw me and attempted to cross in the traffic).

[Guest PipDG]

Yes, we will look into sign language as well. As he can hear out of one ear we've been getting by with voice so far, but sign will be an additional help.

[Batmom]

Very interesting, and useful for you to know. Thank you for sharing this!

 

 

 

 

BTW, a couple of my obedience classes (where I was a student, not a teacher) included a completely deaf dog. He learned a lot of signs for his owner, who had no prior experience with deaf dogs. Was really neat to see.

[Guest jetska]

Would love to get a hearing test for Mouser, but in the end it's not that important to us as she is adapting. She clearly can't tell what direction sounds are coming from and that has contributed to her leash reactivity on certain streets with lots of barking dogs. I suspect she has hearing loss on one side. She is predominately white with a tiny bit of fawn colouring in her coat (spots on her ears and some on her body). We only let her off leash in fenced or very safe areas anyway but she's getting better at keeping a visual track of us.

[Guest Scouts_mom]

Fascinating! I always wondered how they tested a dog's hearing.

[Guest PipDG]

Would love to get a hearing test for Mouser, but in the end it's not that important to us as she is adapting. She clearly can't tell what direction sounds are coming from and that has contributed to her leash reactivity on certain streets with lots of barking dogs. I suspect she has hearing loss on one side. She is predominately white with a tiny bit of fawn colouring in her coat (spots on her ears and some on her body). We only let her off leash in fenced or very safe areas anyway but she's getting better at keeping a visual track of us.

 

Mouser sounds a lot like Harvey. He's white with a blue patch on one side of his face. His deaf ear is his almost completely white ear (it has a few blue freckles). Although he's not leash reactive he's very poorly socialised with other dogs. He's not at all aggressive but he just doesn't know how to greet other dogs politely. Our obedience trainer thinks he just missed a lot of social cues growing up. He also does the whole looking around to see where sounds are coming from thing. Our girl is completely good off leash so it's been a bit of an adjustment for us having to be careful where we let him loose. I will always have a GPS on his collar if he's not in a completely confined space.

[Guest jetska]

Predominately white dogs used to be really uncommon here in Oz but there seem to be more and more of them appearing lately. We have a pretty white girl with a blue face patch in foster at the moment. I think she's OK hearing wise thankfully! It can take a bit of patience to deal with.

 

GPS on a collar is a great idea but hopefully he will learn to stay within line of sight and that will help things

[EllenEveBaz]

Very interesting.

 

<< my husband held him while I held a pair of headphones over his ears. He was brilliant and stood there calmly the whole time.>>

 

Would have loved to see a video of this. Our wonderful greyhounds

[Bill419]

My daughter is an audiologist and she tests infants by measuring their brain waves. I'll have to tell her about your dog being tested that way.

[Sambuca]

Interesting to hear how it's done.

 

There are collars out there that are basically walker talkies so you can talk to the dog easily from a distance. Some also vibrate to get the dogs attention. You could use either to help with training.