Is it willful disobedience and noncompliance.... or is it an undiagnosed health issue? Part Two
This post is a continuation of another of our posts, which can be found here!
In our last post I talked about many of the subtle signs that my dog Phoebe's hips were bad; I could have easily said "oh she's being disobedient" or blamed her for being "stubborn", when really she wasn't physically comfortable doing the things I was asking for and finding out that ultimately bad hips were to blame saved us both a lot of trouble!
Unfortunately, she's not my only animal with some health issues which disguised themselves as my dog "being bad".
My other dog, Regis, is the reason I became a trainer. Regis is an almost 13 year old beagle mix who I brought home at 6 months old. After bringing Regis home, as he moved into adolescence, he started to present with resource guarding, leash reactivity, aggressive behavior when being handled, aggressive behavior when disturbed while resting, and some mild stranger danger. He really taught me A LOT about working with dogs who had behavior issues, and taught me all about how to be a better guardian to my dogs.
Like many beagles, Regis was never "easy" to train. He was very food motivated, yes, but when he was outside his sense of smell often overpowered his desire to train, and if you combine that with his independent personality and behavior issues, he definitely challenged me!
But as he got older and his behavior issues evened out, and as he matured, he became a much easier dog to train and manage! The more we worked together the more convinced he became that training with me was great fun, and the less environmentally focused he got.
We got to a point where he could see a squirrel or rabbit just a few feet away and would respond to my "leave it" cue, and he would always respond to our marker word "yes" when he saw a dog that was making him uncomfortable. More often then not he would come when I called him in from the yard, and it was easy to get his attention and keep it when needed.
Until recently.
In the fall of 2024 I started to notice that Regis was "blowing me off" more. I would say one of his known, well practiced cues and he would just completely and fully ignore me. I'd be standing out in the yard, telling him to come inside, and Regis would just keep his head down and continue to mosey around the yard; I started to think "what, is he getting stubborn in his old age? What the heck man?!"
I honestly started to get pretty frustrated, even mad at him. I tried to go back to the drawing board with our training, tried to practice more, changed up the reinforcers I was using, but he was still being so stubborn!
Or so I thought. Then one week I realized: he was no longer hearing me when I got home from work at night. Ever since I got Regis as a puppy he would always hear my car door beep when it was locked and would run to the door howling to greet me. Until last year, when more often then not I would be able to get inside the house and go all the way over to him before he even realized I was home .
Hello, DUH MARY. He was going deaf. Regis wasn't blowing me off intentionally, and he wasn't being stubborn. He was literally not able to hear me anymore, which is why he was no longer responding to my cues.
This honestly probably should have been the first thing I considered (whenever an adult dog suddenly starts to behave differently, the very first thing that should be investigated is their health!) but he was still responding to so many other noises that it didn't occur to me. I think that Regis is mostly able to hear lower register sounds, and has started to have difficulty hearing higher pitches (which I usually use with my voice when training). This explains the selective hearing and why he could hear sometimes, but not others.
Now that I know Regis' hearing is mostly going, I have changed my expectations a bit. I keep a better eye out for animal poop on our walks now that I know his response to my leave it cue is going to be inconsistent at best, and I go out in the yard to bring him in rather than calling him from the door. Luckily his automatic response to seeing dogs on our walks is to disengage and check in with me uncued, so I don't have to change anything about his behavior on leash when he sees a potential trigger, and honestly he's pretty automatic with squirrels too!
I certainly could start to train up some new cues (i.e. an automatic leave it with animal poop) but right now our management is working well enough, and honestly it's just enough for me to know that Regis isn't ignoring me ON PURPOSE, and it's not a relationship issue, it's just that he can't actually hear me!
Return to our blog next week as I discuss the last case where a health issue was to blame rather than "bad" behavior like I initially thought!
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