E379: 안젤리카 스테인커(Angelic Steinker) - "반려견의 청각 및 시각 장애 다루기"

Um, and you know, well, there you have it. Maybe he can't hear out of one ear. And, uh, and then I found out he was hearing impaired. Interesting. So was it just the kind of turning in one direction? What other types of symptoms, you know, might somebody say? Um, well, you know, it's one of those things where hindsight is 20, 20. So at the time I didn't really understand the warning signs, but, um, he wouldn't be able to find me on like, if you did, uh, you know, that classic game of hiding, he wouldn't be able to find me. So like I tucked behind a tree or I laid down underneath the tunnel and I call him, he would not able to find me based on that. And, um, that was one of the red flags that something might be wrong. And then, um, uh, he seemed to like, just have a highly exaggerated startle response to noises. And that didn't seem to be subject to any sort of learning. Like, you know, if he was sleeping, for example, and he woke, he would be like, Oh my God, what just happened? And I'm like, I walked into the room the way that I did yesterday and the day before and the day before that, you know, stuff like that. So, um, and with the visually impaired dog, it was, you know, a whole nother bag of stuff, but it was more proprioceptive. And, um, I was attempting to do agility with him and that's definitely a way to figure out your dog can't see as well as other dogs. Can you elaborate a little more on that? Just, you know, what was it you were seeing in agility that you were like, Hmm, something's not quite right here. So it wasn't just in agility with the visually impaired dog. Um, again, hindsight is 2020, right? I hadn't parented a visually impaired dog before. And that's why I really wanted to do this podcast and really share this information with you guys, because it was such a struggle with both dogs. If you don't know that they have an impairment and you're having difficulty communicating with them, um, it's, it's very lonely. And, um, there's a lot of people out there who might use that to attempt to criticize you. And, um, there's not a lot of people out there who know how to help. So I'm hopefully going to contribute some information to some people to be of help. Um, but with the visually impaired dog, for example, he couldn't learn hand targeting, a very simple, basic behavior. Like, why can't he learn to hand target? And, you know, my philosophy has always been, every dog is different. You train the dog that you have. And if he doesn't want to harm target, I thought maybe it was some sort of aversion to touching his nose to my hand.

Although he didn't appear to have issues in that, you know, way, but I just kind of was like, okay, he doesn't want to hand target. So we don't hand target. And then he had a really hard time with anything that was body awareness oriented, you know, like anything with a prop, obviously target stick was a problem. Um, shaping was a problem. Like he just had, um, in hindsight, very, very different perception, perception of the world that until I could see like he does, um, I was not as effective in communicating with them. So, you know, kind of once you maybe had a suspicion that something was going on, did you go to your vet and say, Hey, I think this is it? Or was it more of like a back and forth conversation or what did they do to kind of confirm that like, yes, we've got a vision impairment here. Like, yes, we've got a unilaterally deaf dog or like, talk me through some of that. So with the vision impairment, it was a process and it was, um, not fun. Um, initially I thought, well, maybe he has some sort of orthopedic issue. Um, and that seemed like a logical thing to outrule. So we saw, you know, a rehab that like all of us use. And, um, she was like, no, he is rock solid. He has some sore muscles, like a normal active dog sport dog, but there's nothing here that is a problem at all. And, um, he, he wasn't ever lame or anything like that. So that, you know, ultimately made sense. Um, so then pretty much ruling all those other things out, it had to be vision, right? Like that was kind of the only thing left. So I took him to a board certified veterinary ophthalmologist. And sadly, the person, um, was not very interested in, I think, actually listening to what I was saying and just said, you know, I think your dog has PRA. Um, the retina is not normal and your dog's going to be blind in a year. And I spent three months crying and come to find out he does not have PRA because I took him to, uh, another clinic, uh, university veterinary school, and they had all the instruments to actually check the retina and to conclusively determine that he is not have PRA. And they were actually able to check his vision. Um, I want to add that they did not want to do this. They pretty much kicked and screamed. I brought them chocolate. I bribed them with everything I could to get them to do it. And then, um, they reluctantly told me that he is, uh, farsighted. And, um, they said that several people, you know, did the exam and they all concluded he was farsighted. And, um, honestly, that was not sufficient data. Um, because what I learned eventually through doing more research and help with Nancy Gives,

who's just an awesome person and has a beautiful Facebook group, early take off network, ETO network for dogs that have visual impairment that do agility. Um, is that, you know, I really needed to find a pediatric ophthalmologist. So I found a pediatric ophthalmologist and she agreed to see my dog after hours. And she is the one that was really helpful to me. She explained that my dog has esotropia, which is improper pupil alignment. So his pupils actually cross. So he's cross-eyed and the brain does not like cross-eyed. And so the brain will turn off one eye and hence you have monocular vision. Well, gee, I don't know. Would you be able to like perceive where depth is if you have only one eye working? When she told me that my, my life changed, my world changed and particles world changed. It was incredibly empowering. And, um, and then I, it was wonderful. The other thing that I was able to, um, also through Nancy Gives and clean run has a really great magazine on, um, early takeoff. That was a wonderful resource. I, I, and this was pure luck. I found a visio motor therapist. So this is a person that works with nonverbal children and does visio motor therapy. Now, the key was that she was working with very low functioning children. Most visio motor therapy is, you know, for, for kids that need to read for humans that need to read. And so a lot of it centers on reading, which would be very useless for a dog. She was working with nonverbal children. She was working with children that are just trying to use a language board. So this is really ideal. And she, oh my gosh, she changed our life so much. I, I can't go into all the detail of what I learned because it would take up the whole entire time of the podcast on its own, but it was amazing. And I'm very grateful to Denise Stipe for her amazing coaching and her amazing help. And to answer the question in terms of the hearing impaired dog, it's very simple. We have a bear test out there and all we did was get Zoomy bear tested and it came back one flat line, nothing, no data. And the other one was hearing. So that was very simple and incredibly helpful. Now with your dogs, are those things likely genetic? Are they just, you know, abnormalities that just, you know, kind of unique to that dog? Do you know? I don't think we know in the last time I looked at hearing impairment, there are three known causes, the Merle gene, the piebald gene and unknown. Um, obviously Zoomy was a, a border collie. So he had the piebald gene, but like, whatever, lots of border collies have piebald genes and don't have a hearing impairment.

You know, I think stuff just happens. It's, I don't think it's kind to blame anybody. Um, and, um, with particle, I do know that he was stuck in the birth canal. So I suspect that it may not have at all have been anything genetic. It just, you know, he just got stuck in that may have possibly damaged the vision part of his brain. Really interesting stuff. Um, can you just talk a little bit about the difference since you've had both, you know, a dog with vision impairment and a dog, um, some hearing impairment? Um, can you talk about kind of the differences in training them or the differences between them and maybe other dogs that you've had? Can you dive into that a little bit? Yeah, I'd love to. It's totally different. And it's really hard. Um, with Zoomy, um, you know, like I was used to border collies. I'd had several border collies and you know, they're extremely verbal and you know, they're often one trial learners. He required many more repetitions. I am not joking. Like if a normal dog had it proved and solid with 200 reps, he would take 2000. And I don't think that there was anything going on other than he, like, I don't think he was mentally impaired. I think that he had sensory integration issues. I think that he had difficulty making sense of the world because no one could talk to him and tell him, Hey, look, you can't hear out of one ear. It seemed to me like there was this fundamental distrust of his senses to some degree. He expected to be surprised and he was, um, very soft. What we trainers call, you know, a soft dog and very sensitive. He, he would easily stress. Um, despite, um, you know, I had at the time two other border collies that would not be like that. So I would say, well, I wasn't the variable, um, because my other border collies were able to offset stress and zoomie had a much harder time. Um, but I learned, you know, to just persist. And like in agility, we learned to, um, make the, um, if we used verbal cues to only use them sparingly. And then I'd spend a lot of time training them. So you learn how to compensate. There are ways to, to do it. You know, you use a little release cue and you don't name any of the obstacles and you use left and right and you name the contacts. And that's what I did. And, you know, and then of course I had to release off the contact at the time. Two on, two off was the big thing. So, um, so you, you just learn how to help them. What about particle? Um, so with particle, um, my heart was broken because I spend all this time training agility and I, I feel like, you know, I, I teased him.

I, I did all this foundation training for agility and then I, and then come to find out like he can't do it. Like it's not safe. So, um, with particle, um, he had the, the classic early takeoff, which means he took off too early in front of the jump. And then he would take it with his hind legs. And I just no amount of jump shoot training. It was very fascinating. I'll share this. Like if you put them in a jump shoot and you back chained it, he could do it. Like I am amazed at what this dog can do physically when he is significantly visually impaired. He continues to amaze me. He can do weaves. How did I teach him to weave? I put his face next to the first pole. Well, I back chained it. But then when I had all 12, I put his face next to the first pole and I told him weave. And he just did the pattern for 12 poles and was done with it. Right? So then how did I teach him entrances? Well, that's only taken 15,000 years. Um, and you can only do an entrance from certain angles. You know, you can't, there's just not, he can't really do it, but he can do enough to be exercised and have good quality of life. I taught particle how to do a teeter backwards. Um, because doing it forwards was not going to be a safe thing. No matter what I tried, I tried to teach like as a walk, like a hurting cue, you know, like walk, wait, walk, wait, walk, wait. But the moment I'd say, okay, he'd be like, giant unsafe line. So, um, I just decided, you know what, let's just do it backwards. So he knows teeter backwards. Um, he can do tunnel forward and backwards. So, you know, you just make the best of it. And is he ever going to be able to compete in agility? No, most definitely not. It's, it's not reasonable. And I don't think it would be safe and his safety is first and foremost, but we have a lot of fun together. Um, he does do dock jumping. Um, you know, another super interesting thing about particle is, um, one of the big things when you tell people he's low vision, he's visually impaired, people go, well, you can do scent. And as Stacy Barnett will tell you, they use their eyes when they're searching. And let me tell you, teaching him scent was not for the faint of heart. It was very, very difficult. Um, shadows were huge issues, huge issue. I mean, same thing in agility. If there's a shadow, same thing in dock jumping. If there's a shadow anywhere, I'm probably toast. My dog's probably not going to be able to do anything that he normally can because he cannot perceive the difference between a solid object and shadow does not understand that fundamentally. He, he, especially if it's bright light.

So I had to teach my dog to weave in the shade with no sunlight and then gradually increase the times of day to more light. And then gradually move the weave poles into full light and all this kind of stuff, things that we normally never do, you know, but Hey, it makes you more observant. It teaches you to be a better trainer ultimately. So I'm very grateful for what I've learned. Now, I know you've had, um, particle who mentioned, you know, slow vision, vision impaired and zoomie who is unilaterally deaf. Have you had experience also with completely deaf dogs? So I own a dog school and at my school, we've had lots and lots of deaf dogs and it's really fascinating. A lot of people don't realize that a deaf dog in many ways is easier to train than a hearing dog because you no longer have auditory distractions. So yes, you have some serious safety concerns with deaf dogs in terms of recall and having them off leash and them being safe, but they're really easy to train because, you know, especially when you like me work with pet people and they go sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit. They don't hear that. So that entire problem is solved. And if they give a ham signal, they tend to just hold that and not repeat it. So the, the deaf dog training, I find really easy and smooth and they don't have any origin of sound issues. They don't have any sort of exaggerated start response, all of those things are gone. And with Zumi from the day that I got him to the day that he passed into doggy heaven, he woke up with a massive startle and it broke my heart. I always tried to help him and, and reduce that. And I was never successful. I tried to Helen Keller it and take his little paw and make a sound on his paw so that he could feel my breath and hear the sound. But he never, there was no, he had no concept of it. He couldn't, or, or I was just not good enough of a trainer to, to reach him. Um, I didn't find the right way. Um, but he never understood that. And, um, with particle, um, his, his, he also has an exaggerated startle because I think he doesn't trust his visual data, which makes sense because it's impaired. Um, and I will say that a lot of things are improving. You know, I'm not going to delude myself that he's ever going to be able to fully compensate for his visual impairment, but he, um, he is amazing. And just, I just adore him. And, um, it's, it's so much fun helping him and me learning how to help. How old is he now? Um, particles four. Okay. So you guys have quite a bit of time probably to experiment a little bit and see what else you can find to work together and do things together.

That's, that's exciting. Um, okay. So you've mentioned agility in here. You've mentioned some doc in here. You maybe mentioned nose work a little bit. Um, is it common? Are these types of dogs able to compete successfully in dog sports? Do you kind of, um, ask for accommodations? Do you provide them with accommodations? What might they need? What do they need? Can you dive into that aspect? Sure. Um, so with Zumi, um, you're a disc dog person too. And, um, what I noticed with him is he had to have a white disc. Like he could not switch to a different color disc. Like, I don't understand what was going on with that. But if I was doing, you know, like I dabbled in freestyle with him. If I did freestyle with him, I had to have seven white discs. They could not be any different color at all. Um, that was it. And, um, he was phenomenal. I mean, Zumi was an amazing athlete. Um, we did rally. He did very well in rally. He did amazing in disc. He, he was more ambitious in disc than I was. He loved it. He was phenomenal at disc. I mean, he was really exceptional. Um, and then I did agility with him and he did well with that. He did have sadly some, um, orthopedic issues. Um, nobody's fault, but he had to have, um, one muscle of his quadricep removed. And, you know, obviously if you get an entire one muscle of the quadricep that has four muscles removed, that's going to, you know, give you some physical problems. And so he had some compensatory shoulder issues and stuff. But when, when he was physically able, he was great. And, um, once I knew he was unilaterally death and I did a deep dive and I got some help from people who were like, oh yeah, it's way harder training a uni dog than, you know, a death dog. And they did like knowledge dumps for me. Um, it was, it was okay. I mean, um, what I would say, you have to realize that they can't determine the origin of growling. So they have some social skills deficits. So if a dog growled near Zumi, he would put himself in a corner, um, face first and just kind of shut down because he, he couldn't tell who it was. Um, and, um, but he lived with other dogs and he was, you know, okay. Living with other dogs. Um, and so, and then with, um, particle, um, it's really fascinating. He also has social skills deficits. Um, if it's a large white dog, like there's a large white great Dean, great Dane right next to him. He's okay because they're white and they're huge and he can see them. And, but most dogs are not large white great Danes. Unfortunately for him. And there's a lot of small black dogs out there.

Um, and they are particularly terrifying and, um, you fast moving dogs are more scary. And, um, but he can be off leash with other dogs. He lives, as you know, with two other dogs and, um, he has fun with them. He is a rough player because he doesn't understand fundamentally proprioception no matter how much I try. Um, and if you were to greet him, he would, um, be very effervescent in his greeting of you because he doesn't really understand where he ends and you begin. But I, I love it and I value it and I appreciate it. And I think it's one of the most endearing traits of my particle. What other things do you maybe consider when you're, when you're looking at these dogs? Do you have other tips or tricks maybe for living with them successfully? Um, so I would say like never blame the dog. Always adjust your training. I would say if you're not having success, it's not evidence that you need to climb the ladder of any sort of aversive stimulation. It's evidence that you need more data, that you need more, um, input and mentoring and, and, you know, my success with Zumi and Particle, despite their impairments, it took a village to get those successes. And, and there's nothing wrong with that. And it actually makes it a lot more fun. Um, and, um, my, my hope is that this podcast will help other people out there, um, maybe consider that their dog has some sort of impairment and make the effort to find a pediatric ophthalmologist to take a look at their dog's eyes because, um, veterinary pathologists, veterinary, um, ophthalmologists are more interested in pathology. They want to, you know, they want to look at disease and they're busy people and they don't have time and they don't have training in, in assessing vision. So it's, that's really the only path to getting an answer. Yeah. I can see how that would be a very different process than, you know, when you're just trying to determine if there's a disease at the root of it, then like, okay, what, where are we on the scale? Right. Like those are very different, um, from a problem solving perspective. Yeah. It's really fascinating. I've learned so much about vision and I really would love to learn more. Like for example, athletes have this, um, higher level vision, right. That they use, like it's vision that is for their sport. And that is, you know, supremely timed and, um, they're visually assessing, you know, very precise data. And I, I wish I could know more about that. And then in the context of dogs, but obviously that doesn't exist. Um, there is a bunch of, um, research out there on, um, dogs.

Well, I shouldn't say a bunch, a handful of studies. Um, and then there's some on cats also, um, Siamese cats apparently have a high incidence of esotropia, which is cross-eyed. Um, so, but you know, the thing is dog sports is a relatively new thing, right? I mean, look at it in, in terms of the domestication of dogs in modern times, it's relatively new. And so there's just, there's, there's a void and I hope that people will become interested. I think it's a great, rich area for research because there's not a lot out there. Do we, do we have any information on just how common, um, vision or hearing impairment is in dogs? I don't think we do. I think there may be some data in certain breeds. I mean, you've probably heard the same thing. I've heard that certain breeds have tendency towards, um, hearing issues and that obviously moral to moral breeding can cause blindness and deafness and stuff like that. Um, but I really don't think anybody's looking at, you know, an overall collection of data. And, um, one thing I learned that's super interesting is, um, you know, you think like DNA is the big thing now and Hey, you know, we can get DNA and, and no, like, why does a dog, for example, have PRA, which particle does not have, but, um, sadly some border collies do. So, um, there are, there's DNA tests out there for PRA, but they're breed specific. So if you send your dog's DNA to one of the organizations, you find out your dog does not have dandy Dinmont PRA. Well, that's really helpful when your dog's a border collie. Right. So I didn't know. And then I talked to some of the researchers who are trying to get, um, border collie PRA DNA tests. And I just thought, Oh, all you need is one dog that has it. You figure out which gene it is. No, they need like many, many, many, many dogs with PRA and then they can figure it out. So, you know, it's all very complicated and slow moving. Maybe artificial intelligence will help us. We can hope, right? Yes. Um, do you have any maybe final thoughts or key points you kind of want to leave listeners with, or even, even any resources you'd point folks to? Um, yeah, I'd like to share like with. You know, the visually impaired dog scent is a really great thing to do with them. So I think it's fantastic, but you have to understand that to some degree, if to lower expectations, there's going to be certain environments that they're not going to be able to search or they're not going to be able to search. Well, um, particles, very reluctant to, um, search in accessible areas. I've worked on it a lot in, he's a lot better.

But if I'm in a brand new environment and there's a weird corner, he's not going to search that corner. And if the judge put the odor in that quarter, my dog's going to miss it. And you just have to kind of, you know, accept that. And, um, however, if there's a search in a field and there's nothing out there, that kind of search might intimidate a lot of kind of people. Cause they'd be like, oh, there's nothing to search, right? Particle will excel. He loves the searches where there's nothing. He's amazing because he doesn't have to think about, am I going to bump into something? You know, what is this? Is this an item or is this a shadow or, you know, whatever? I don't know, of course, exactly what he thinks, but he definitely has difficulty processing, um, that visual stimuli. So I think that might be helpful to somebody doing scent with a visually impaired dog. And, and also, you know, lots of dogs become visually impaired as they mature. My Papillon, who presumably had normal vision is now developing early takeoff. Um, and I took them to the, um, ophthalmologist and they said, he's got some early cataract stuff, you know, just from aging, not, not that anything did anybody did anything wrong. Um, and so, you know, it's important that we educate ourselves because if you're doing sports with your dogs, you want to know what this, what might happen as they age in their vision phase. That's so interesting. And that's such a, um, kind of a good point to make, right? Like we think about when we see behavior change, maybe there's pain, but we don't always necessarily think about, okay, there's a behavior change or a behavior I'm not expecting, uh, based on this dog's, you know, genetics or based on this dog's breed or based on whatever. Um, and, um, kind of looking at, okay, is it something like cataracts or vision or something that's starting to go as they age? Um, it's always worth thinking about those things, right? Instead of just assuming that it's a training problem. Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, we all need to not blame our dogs, right? I mean, obviously Denise is just amazing person and having brought so much positive training to such a huge part of the world. I'm eternally grateful to her. Um, but we need to keep pushing that message out there because there's a lot of people training with aversive stimulation and, you know, their dogs might not be able to see their dogs might not be able to hear out of one ear. You know, um, I do a lot of behavior consulting and I've run into dogs in, in my behavior consulting

work that I don't know, but I would bet money are unilaterally deaf and have an exaggerated reaction to the doorbell because of that. Um, and you know, gee, every time I made a noise behind them, they turned in the same direction. So I'm not a veterinarian and I can't diagnose anything and I'm would never do that. But I would say that dog definitely needs to be checked. And some clients choose to do that and some clients choose not to do that. Most pet clients are not terribly motivated. I think us dog sport people are much more motivated to, to get down to the truth. To figure it out. Yeah. Um, awesome. Well, uh, thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk about all of this and, uh, it was such an interesting topic. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you for what you're doing. Awesome. Well, thank you again. And thanks to all our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fendi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fendi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Body. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. o