Riker is watching closely now

Riker, who is twelve now, began losing some hearing about three or four months ago. I paid attention because he seemed a little depressed. He was eating well, urine and feces were fine, he wasn’t sore any place new, and he was sleeping well. But he wasn’t initiating play like he used to do and that’s different. We usually play a little every morning and he would ask to do it. He was also a little grumpy with the other dogs. This was before Paul passed away and there wasn’t anything else going on in the house to make Riker depressed.

As I paid attention to him I could see he wasn’t responding as he normally did when I talked to him. So I did some tests with my voice, keys, and a number of other sounds and realized he was losing some hearing. Ah ha! Then I realized that to get his attention, I had been using a louder, sharper tone of voice. He could hear that and apparently thought he was being yelled at, and therefore that he was in trouble. Poor Riker! Stupid me.

So I began testing to see what tones of my voice he could still hear. He had lost the middle range of hearing that included my normal speaking voice. But he could hear my deeper tones and my higher, happier tones. So now I coochy-coo Riker using my ‘ice cream!’ voice.

I’m also remembering to smile when I look at him. The dogs do usually make me smile anyway but now I’m smiling more often because Riker will turn into a wiggling donut of an Aussie with just a smile.

I’m also using more hand signals. Thankfully I normally do use hand signals with all of the dogs’ training so Riker already knows quite a few. But we’ve added a few more, including a sweep of the hand to come in the open door, a sweep upwards to jump into the car, and a sweep down to jump out. I hold both hands out to him so he will walk into my hands so I can pick up up to put him on my bed. I’m sure Riker and I will develop more hand signals as we go along.

Now that I understand what’s going on and have altered what I’m doing, Riker is back to his normal happy self.  And I’ve noticed that he’s watching me more closely. Apparently he’s figured out that I’m trying to communicate with him using my facial expressions and hand signals. Poor boy, I feel bad for making him unhappy before, but I’m glad he was able to get my attention.

Photo: Riker, sound asleep. Photo by Liz Palika.

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