My Airedale and I have been out dove hunting several times. This has exposed her to A LOT of shooting.....
This got me thinking, what are the long term effect on her hearing is? She is 15 months old, so obviously has a lot of life left.
Is there anything to do, or just let it be?
My 4 quail dogs all ended up with some hearing loss in my opinion. Not aware of anything that can be done about it.
Old gun dogs get very good at pretending not to hear commands, especially from kids and girlfriends.
It is easy to test their hearing though, open a can of tuna or a bag of chips in the kitchen while the dog is sleeping in the other room.
It turns out an old dog’s ability to hear is much greater than its willingness to listen. At least in my experience, haha.
Backroads is right. We lost one of our old pups a few weeks back, no tragedy, as he was an old man and went out well, but dang if he didn't develop that "selective" hearing in the last year or two.... lol. We let it slide, because we know we'll be old and a bit cantankerous one day too.
It can’t be cured, but you can help. Having it close to a lot of gun fire won’t help… but next to you in a Dove field is a necessity. Other than that, keep them away from being close to a trap or skeet field, and you most likely are doing the best you can do.
Side by side with an unfamiliar outdoor noise, it is easy to see the 2YO hears better than the 7YO.
I always teach a hand signal with every command. At about seven I notice they seem to be looking back a lot more more direction. I've actually tried ear plugs in the duck blind but they always shake them out.
My first Draht was loosing her hearing in her later years. I had her whistle trained and she could not her the whistle tone. I would have to nick her with the collar. I now teach all my dogs to respond to vibrate on the collar just the same as the whistle. To this day I feel bad for having to nick her on walks, she used to look back at me like "what did I do wrong?"
I believe their is a reason that the hunting breeds have ears that flop down cover their ear canal. Just my reasoning......
Old gun dogs get very good at pretending not to hear commands, especially from kids and girlfriends.
It is easy to test their hearing though, open a can of tuna or a bag of chips in the kitchen while the dog is sleeping in the other room.
It turns out an old dog’s ability to hear is much greater than its willingness to listen. At least in my experience, haha.
Or drop something in the bowl while they are in another room.
Open the freezer door in the side by side fridge/freezer unit.
There's ice cream in there....