My Brittany is quite quickly getting harder and harder of hearing. It makes it tough for us to hunt, as she cannot really hear well enough to respond much when out in the field.

We hunt mostly tall grass and cattails, and thus she cannot check in visually very easily either. This means that she usually ends up lost in the middle somewhere, on point with no way for me to know what she is up to. I used to just whistle her in closer but know she never hears it.

What do you do with a deaf bird dog, especially a pointer?

I have zero pointing dog experience but I used a "shock" collar with the vibrator feature on my Boykin Spaniel for over ten years. She went deaf at a very young age. I trained her to sit when the collar vibrated. It actually made for some very quiet and relaxing hunts. Good luck

My last Britt became pretty hard of hearing at about 10yo.Very hard to hunt a deaf dog in the grouse woods. An e-collar with a vibration signal let him know he needed to check in with me. And a beeper collar set on "point only" signal let me find him when on point in the cover. Worked pretty well for his last couple of years. GL.

NB

^^^This^^^

Fighting same problem with my GSP. Have taught him that the vibration replaces beep and to circle back when he feels it.

I have had two GWPs both lose hearing in their 11th and 12th year. I picked up on the first dog's loss early and began using hand signals for him to return. Fortunately he was always stopping to see were I was.

I use a Garmin Astro to keep track of them. A few times the dog would get too far to hear a loud whistle. I have fired the shotgun which sometimes helped. One time I watched the dog run the wrong way trying to get back to me! Very thankful for the tracking collar. I had to run him down.

I like the idea of using a vibrating collar to make the dog stop. Add a tracking collar and at least it would be easy to catch up to the dog! Trying to catch up to one of my dogs in mearns country is not an easy task.

It sure is tough to observe the decline of our dogs.

A Garmin Alpha will solve your problems. It has both GPS and shock/vibration capability in 1 collar and hand held unit.

Thanks guys. She is definitely slowing down also, so maybe I can train her to check in based on the vibration. I've taken to avoiding cattails with her, or only hunting really small patches, so that I don't lose her in a big slough again. Knee-high grass is the nicest.