Mother, Father Deaf Day 2025 is on Sunday, April 27, 2025: Potty Training 8 week old DEAF puppy?

Sunday, April 27, 2025 is Mother, Father Deaf Day 2025. Mother Father Deaf Day – Children of Deaf Adults Inc. as Mother Father Deaf Day.

Sounds like a handful with 2 little ones!

Deaf puppies/dogs are not much different to train than dogs that can hear. They both learn better through hand signals in the beginning. The only difference is that you have to find alternative ways to get your deaf puppies attention. Training will be an important step for your puppy to become an enjoyable and safe member of your household as he will definitely become a large dog and will be more difficult to control once he reaches his full size.

Are you crate training him? Crate training will be the easiest method of potty training for both you and him. The first step would be to find the right size crate. It should be just big enough for your puppy to stand up, turn around, and lay down in. Any bigger, and your puppy will go to a far corner to defecate or urinate. The point of the crate is to keep your puppy from going to the bathroom when you are away from the house. You can expect them to hold it for an hour per month of age. So, if your puppy is 12 weeks old, he should be able to hold it in for 3 hours. This is just a rule of thumb. Some can't wait quite as long and others can wait a little longer, but for a successful potty training experience, you will need to devote some time to correcting his mistakes and giving him time to learn where it is appropriate for him to relieve himself. When you are home, constant supervision is a must. If you do not catch him in the act, do not punish him. He won't know what the punishment is for as dogs primarily live in the here and now. If you do catch him in the act, pick a hand signal for no (a finger pointing directly at him, a waving hand in front of his face, etc) pick him and bring him to the proper location. When he does what he is expected to do, pick a hand signal for good job (thumbs up, clapping motion, etc) have some treats that he really enjoys handy and reward him! Continue to do this over time and he will learn. Some tips that will make potty training easier: limit food and water intake. If your puppy has access to water and food whenever he wants, you will not be able to know when he is going to need to go potty. So feed him and water him when you are there and prepared to guide him in the right direction afterwards. If you are concerned with water while you are out, a good idea to limit water intake is to throw a few ice cubes in his bowl. Times that your puppy will likely need to relieve himself are after eating and drinking, heavy play times, after waking up from sleeping, and after anything that was super exciting for him (you or dad coming home, a knock at the door, etc)

Rough play:

To teach your puppy what is acceptable in play will take a little bit of time as well. When you are playing with him and he starts to get too rough, use your hand signal for no in front of his face and abruptly stop playing with him. Be consistent. You will be making the rules on appropriate playing behavior, so if you do not want him putting his mouth on you at all, end play every single time he does this. If he is playing in an appropriate manner, continue to play with him as a reward! Making sure that your puppy is getting enough exercise will definitely help with this as well. A tired dog is a well behaved dog! So make sure that he is getting plenty of walks, maybe even get him interested in a toy that he can run around and chase after like a ball. Chuck It's work amazing for dogs that are high energy and owners who just can't seem to wear them out. You can find them at Petco or Petsmart. I'm sure Wal-Mart has them as well.

Consistency, patience, and time are going to be your keys to success. Set your standards and make sure that everyone in your household or everyone who has daily interaction with him knows what you expect and the steps that you are taking to get there, including the same hand signals. Good luck to you! I hope that you and your puppy can continue to share the same home happily and comfortably!

Is next Thursday Mothers day?

One fine day in the middle of the night,

Two dead boys* got up to fight, [*or men]

Back to back they faced each other,

Drew their swords and shot each other,

One was blind and the other couldn't, see

So they chose a dummy for a referee.

A blind man went to see fair play,

A dumb man went to shout "hooray!"

A paralysed donkey passing by,

Kicked the blind man in the eye,

Knocked him through a nine inch wall,

Into a dry ditch and drowned them all,

A deaf policeman heard the noise,

And came to arrest the two dead boys,

If you don't believe this story’s true,

Ask the blind man he saw it too!

If a mother is deaf and has a baby would the baby still learn to talk?

If the mother does not speak at all (usually only happens with a person who was born deaf) it may be possible the baby's speech will have a slight delay, but not necessarily. All types of stimulus effect language development. He has a father who speaks and most likely has other relatives and friends who speak to him as well. TV will give him exposure to the spoken language as will the music he hears when riding in the car. When they are out he will hear people speak when he is at the grocery store, the park, a restaurant etc. We had a family in our community with 3 children. The father was hearing, but the mother was deaf. She lost her hearing after she had begun to speak (due to a genetic problem), so she could talk, you just had to listen very carefully to her words. Sometimes you had to use paper and pencil to communicate, but she could read lips quite well. All 3 children were hearing. I only knew the youngest as a baby, but he learned to speak normally, but he also had an older brother and sister to help. Mom knew ASL, but I never saw her use it with her children. Her husband used it to communicate with her sometimes and she used it with the few people in our community who also knew ASL. I never saw the children ever use it, though. I think that as long as the baby is exposed to many different people and situations he will learn to speak normally. Much of speech and language development is a natural progression of experimentation and even if he never hears his mother speak, he will hear language from other sources.