2010: A Deaf Puppy - Skye's Story

Skye's story so far:

One day back in March 2010 I saw a post on Facebook about a deaf puppy thatwas in the TT rescue - I made a passing comment to my husband, and guess what!! he said we should look in to the possibility of taking it on - well to say the least I was totally shocked.

Our Tibetan Terrier Harry was 9 months old at this point, and we were just getting used to him being house trained and starting to do a little of what he was told. We discussed it a lot more and I finally phoned to find out some more - well the puppy had been homed - so I thought it was obviously just not meant to be.

Two weeks later another post was put on FB, this time there was a brother and sister(and I'm pretty sure their Mum was too) I telephoned and got lots of information - and spoke a great lengths to the lovely people in rescue, daily phone calls and plenty of questions from both sides - eventually because of distance (we're in Scotland, rescue was Gloucester) we had our home check done and it was agreed that we could take one of the puppies, we chose the wee bitch, and by the time we had managed to arrange to collect her she was 16 weeks old.

She has been a joy!!! The sweetest wee soul you could wish for. Yes she was hard work - but aren't all puppies? Yes, you have to make sure she's looking at you when you want her to take
notice of you - just as you do with CHILDREN.
Yes it's frustrating sometimes, when you call her and she doesn't respond - Harry does that a lot of the time too and he can hear!! -typical TT.
No we can NEVER let her off the lead, unless she's braced with Harry.
No I can't honestly think of any other down side to having her.
No we can't and would NEVER breed from her - that was never an intention anyway. She's been spayed now.

All in all the positives outweigh the negatives.

We take both the dogs out and about with us, they have a brilliant time, and as you can see from the photo's Skye does not miss out on anything. Harry & Skye are great pals they play and often it's really rough play - Skye holds her own and often is the ringleader.

Rescue do a wonderful job rehoming the unfortunate TT's who for no fault of their own end up needing new forever homes and we are so pleased that we went ahead and decided to take on that deaf puppy - she's a STAR!

As you can see, there are ways of dealing with a deaf dog's needs - 'bracing' the deaf dog with a hearing one makes a huge difference.

A little dog has to be comfortable - this is not negotiable!

FRIENDS ARE BEST. We love company, people who already have a dog or who will take two together have an advantage when looking to rescue a TT.

Isn't Skye just beautiful? (and Harry is fabulous too). She has a fabulous home now and is loved very much.

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(For your information: I often post updates about what's happening with Rescue on my Facebook page - search for Sue Baker and send me a 'friend' request)! Sue