(She does have some other developmental delays that don’t relate to the topic of this post, but we’re getting physical therapy and such at the same time. She’ll receive listening therapy and speech therapy and occupational therapy if we need it, all through the state program. She will get hearing aids, and those will help immensely. We hooked up with our state’s health department, which provides an impressive number of services for kiddos 0-3 with developmental challenges and started aligning support services, one of which is an American Sign Language teacher. They scheduled a follow-up screen in March to try to refine the sounds she could and couldn’t hear–it’s tough in an infant since she can’t tell us anything–and between the two appointments, I started researching everything I could. Mamas want to protect, and this was something I couldn’t keep her from. I worried about what it meant for her and for her future, for all the things that were suddenly thrust completely out of my control. I felt so sad that she couldn’t hear birds chirping, that she couldn’t hear Violet singing to her, that she couldn’t hear me whisper, “I love you,” as I tucked her in at night. At that appointment, we discovered Astrid has mild-to-moderate hearing loss in both ears. They referred us to a pediatric audiologist who could see her at the end of January. She spent nine days in the NICU, and during that time, she failed her newborn hearing screen. Last November, our daughter Astrid was born. Why am I teaching my hearing dog American Sign Language? Choosing ASL rather than arbitrary obedience cues makes sense, too, because a deaf dog needs a lot more guidance than a hearing dog, so you need more signs at your disposal. Makes sense, right? A deaf dog needs to learn hand signals, no question. Most–dare I say all?–of the posts I could find on teaching dogs ASL worked on the premise that the dog was deaf.

Otherwise, here’s where the backstory starts, and I think this is the most important thing to know at the outset: Cooper isn’t deaf. So, if you’re just here to read about sign language cues for dogs, skip ahead to the ASL for Dogs header below. Hello, friends! Let me just insert this quick note up right up front: This post requires a good bit of back story.

Deaf dog hand signals chart