Hearing loss in dogs is partial or total loss to the perception of sounds, which can be observed in dogs different breeds And of various ages. In veterinary medicine, partial and complete hearing loss in animals is distinguished.
Hearing loss in dogs can be caused by more than just various diseases, age-related changes and congenital pathologies, but also occur from injuries, hypothermia, exposure to loud noise and exposure to insects.
In dogs, the hearing aid is the most important organs feelings and often suffers from excessive overload. The owner of the puppy or adult dog You should consult a veterinarian when the first symptoms of hearing loss occur.
The main symptoms of hearing loss in dogs include:
If your dog has hearing problems, the veterinarian will prescribe a series of diagnostic procedures to determine accurate diagnosis and establishing the type of disease. First of all, the veterinarian begins the examination of the dog by collecting an anamnesis, as well as an external and internal examination of the auricle and ear canal. The doctor uses an endoscope during examination small size and otoscope. This type of examination will allow us to identify conductive disorders and the stage of their course.
When examining an animal, it is important to determine functional state inner ear. For this they use special methods by influencing auditory receptors, aimed at identifying auditory sensitivity and reactions of the structures of the inner ear.
The veterinarian’s actions are aimed at eliminating the causes of disorders and their consequences, as well as restoring normal hearing in the animal.
The primary importance of helping the animal is to stop the inflammatory process and eliminate the main symptoms of the disease. The veterinarian acts on the ear canal, expanding it, and then cleanses, rinses with anti-inflammatory drugs and administers vasoactive drugs.
The next stage of treatment, the veterinarian selects several drugs for intramuscular injection and oral administration. The duration of treatment depends on the degree and type of disease, but usually does not exceed 12 months.
If the dog has minor impairments, injuries, or has been hit by a foreign object, then providing first aid will be sufficient. Be sure to wipe or rinse the ear with a cotton swab with a special cleaning solution and remove it from the ear canal foreign objects, use antimicrobial agents.
In case of serious hearing impairment and hearing loss, the veterinarian prescribes histamines, which have a specific effect on inner ear animal and stimulate the functioning of auditory receptors. Often the doctor prescribes betahistine, which must be given to the animal during feeding.
If an animal's eardrum is damaged in a fight or other impact, then dry, purulent or bloody substrate is often released from the ears. Owners should carry out ear cleansing and anti-inflammatory treatment; once the causes of hearing loss are eliminated, the animal recovers within a few days.
In order to avoid serious hearing impairment in dogs and prevent hearing loss, regular preventive measures. The owner should regularly clean the animal's ears of hair, dirt and earwax. Avoid overcooling your ears and preventing water and insects from getting into them.
Subject to availability chronic diseases, in the absence of exacerbation, the veterinarian may prescribe vitamin preparations.
Your dog, ignoring commands, frolics in the flowerbed. And when you, blushing with shame, remove her from the trampled pansies and begin to scold her, she looks at you with clear eyes, as if nothing had happened. Do not rush to give it to the formidable trainer. Perhaps she just doesn't hear you...
Some veterinary clinics offer a quick and painless test to help determine if your dog is deaf. Electrodes are connected to the pet's head - and after a few minutes you already know the answer to your question.
However, the procedure is not cheap. And perhaps, instead of spending a significant amount of money on identifying the disease, you should just get to know your dog’s habits better, and then, if necessary, buy him a training tool for the deaf.
Watch. If you come home and know that the dog is sleeping at this time, call him by name loudly or clap your hands. If the animal doesn’t even move its nose, it most likely suffers from deafness. First make sure that the dog could not smell your scent. Have your helper go into another room so that neither you nor your pet can see him.
Ask him to reproduce the sound that a jar of coins or a metal pot makes when it hits the floor. However, remember that stomping your feet will create air vibrations that the dog will feel. This will prevent you from knowing if she actually heard the sounds. Do not try to make the noise “pleasant” - the pet must show a pronounced reaction, even if it is frightened. If the ringing doesn’t scare him, it means he simply doesn’t hear it.
If the dog turns its ears or head towards where the sound is coming from, but does so hesitantly, as if it does not understand where the source of the noise is, it may be deaf in one ear or partially deaf. In this case, you can go to the veterinarian. He will examine your pet's ear through an otoscope to make sure there are no abnormalities in its development.
In some cases, single-sided deafness offers hope: some problems, such as deformity of the outer ear or infection, can be corrected so that the dog can hear. But sometimes this is impossible: the dog will remain in a quiet world for the rest of his life. If you cannot determine on your own whether your dog is deaf, have him tested at a clinic.
An expensive test will give an accurate result that will help you adjust your dog’s training methods and build a trusting relationship with it. In addition, the clinical test is effective because in case of one-sided deafness it immediately shows which ear is unable to hear. This is very difficult to do at home. In addition, you will find out whether your dog can perceive certain frequencies.
If your dog is still deaf, you should not risk his offspring -. And then... decide if you can take care of special dog, which needs your attention more than full-fledged dogs. If you are ready to take responsibility, learn some rules.
Never leave a deaf dog without a leash or in a place where it can run away. After all, a world that is safe for another dog hides many threats for yours. For example, without hearing traffic, a dog can easily get hit by a car. The only way to attract the attention of a deaf dog is a vibrating ring, with which, if necessary, you need to touch the animal on the shoulder.
It is, of course, more difficult to train a pet that cannot hear than a healthy one. He will never make a good watchdog. Moreover, while some deaf dogs behave quietly, others bark constantly, and their behavior can only be controlled by gestures.
Be careful if your dog is alone with others, even those he knows well. She is unable to hear their bark or growl, and therefore understand the threat. But her brothers won't care. They will “warn” her with a sound signal - and then attack. Jacob, a deaf Boston terrier, found himself in such trouble when Reba was bitten by an American bulldog so old she could barely move.
The question is often asked: the dog cannot hear - what to do? How to help your pet - read the article. We will also give some tips on keeping deaf dogs.
Pet owners often experience deafness in their pets. If a dog cannot hear - what to do, what could be the causes of this disorder, how to help your beloved pet - this article on deafness in dogs will answer these and other questions. We will also talk about very interesting facts related to this topic. The article is intended for pet owners.
Deafness is the complete or partial absence of hearing. It is worth emphasizing right away that it is quite difficult to accurately assess the functionality of this sense organ in dogs, since animals cannot verbally express their problems of this kind. This is especially true for one-sided deafness. Therefore, veterinarians have no choice but to evaluate the dog’s reaction to a certain sound stimulus.
Anything that can damage the external auditory canal or cause a rupture eardrum, or prevent the tiny bones in the middle ear from functioning properly, which can lead to poor hearing or complete loss of hearing. The most common causes of deafness in domestic dogs are ear infections, tumors, wax build-up, as well as age change ear nerve.
In addition, some dogs are born deaf, which may be due to genetic characteristics; for example, it has been noted that animals with white coats are more likely to experience various hearing disorders than dark dogs.
Normally, puppies begin to respond to sound at about 2 weeks of age. Careful breeders, based on their experience, detect hearing disorders long before the puppy is ready to go to a new owner. But people who are not professional dog breeders may not notice deafness in their dog until the pet outwardly stops responding to sound stimuli.
In order for hearing, as a sense organ, to function normally, all links of the auditory chain must function correctly in an animal, starting from the external auditory canal and ending with the hearing center in the brain. Since this chain is quite complex, there are a number of causes of deafness in dogs. The main clinical conditions include:
If your dog has trouble hearing, specific reasons there may be infections of the inner, middle or outer ear - internal or external otitis, development cancerous tumors, physical damage to the eardrum. In addition, there are simpler phenomena, for example, a banal accumulation of wax, usually in combination with various debris that blocks the external auditory canal.
Some medicines, given that long-term use, can cause damage auditory nerve in dogs. These include some antibiotics (aminoglycosides, chloramphenicol, erythromycin), antiseptics (chlorhexidine, ethanol), diuretics (furosemide), anti-cancer drugs (cisplatin) and heavy metals (lead, mercury, arsenic).
Dogs that frequently hunt, or those that are regularly exposed to excessively loud noises, tend to have poorer hearing later on.
Deafness can be caused by degeneration of the auditory nerves, especially in older dogs. Senile hearing loss usually develops gradually and rarely progresses to complete absence hearing Most older dogs with this condition remain able to hear high-frequency sounds, such as a whistle or siren, until the end of their lives.
Among other things, deafness in dogs can also be congenital. This phenomenon can arise on the basis of any defect in the development of auditory nerve cells or other tissues responsible for conducting and interpreting sound waves. Congenital deafness may or may not have a genetic component and is common among Dalmatians, Border Collies, English Setters, Bull Terriers, Collies, English Shepherds and Rottweilers. The anomaly is also diagnosed in puppies small breeds and is often associated with weak pigmentation of the coat, especially on the head and around the ears. Thus, if a litter contains excessively “white heads” for its breed, in the future these dogs should be given more careful attention in terms of hearing assessment.
Hereditary deafness is complex genetic disease, which is difficult to exclude from predisposed breeds, even with careful selection. The chances of hereditary deafness increase significantly if two deaf dogs mate with each other. However, a couple with completely normal hearing may also produce deaf offspring. Since the topic of hereditary deafness in dogs has been poorly studied today, it is believed that a certain gene is to blame.
Since a dog cannot tell whether or how well it can hear, the best criterion for confirming deafness is a careful assessment of the dog's conscious response to an auditory stimulus. At the time of the examination, the animal’s reaction to sound should be distinguished from that to smells, vision and touch, and this is sometimes quite difficult to do. For example, a veterinarian will perform a sound test whose source is outside the animal's vision, but due to the sensitive hairs on its ears ah, a dog can move its ear, not hearing the sound itself, but feeling the sound vibrations.
The most useful test is based on trying to wake the dog with a loud sound. If the dog wakes up only from touch, this sign may be considered positive for deafness. Another thing is that getting an animal to sleep in conditions initial examination clinics can be difficult.
As an option, you can try to call the dog by its name, also being out of its field of vision, but you need to remember that, due to their nature, some dogs can deliberately test the patience of their owner, “deliberately” not reacting to their nickname.
In some cases, a head x-ray can help show a dog's blocked external auditory canals or damage to the ossicles in the middle ear.
One of the best and most accurate ways to diagnose the quality of hearing in animals is the method of short-latency auditory evoked potentials (SLEP), or in the English version - BAEP-test. Especially this method useful in assessing unilateral deafness and allows you to determine not only the complete absence of hearing, but also the severity of the disorder.
The procedure is practically painless and takes relatively short time. The essence of the method is to calculate and record the bioelectrical response of the brain stem to sound stimuli of various types. Typically, this is a frequently repeated clicking sound of varying volume in each ear, delivered to the dog through headphones. In some cases, the animal may need to be lightly sedated as the patient must lie still for approximately 15 minutes for the test to be completed safely. A number of cutaneous reading electrodes are placed on the head and neck and must remain in place during the diagnostic procedure.
It is worth noting that the equipment for similar diagnostics it is not cheap, and the number of owners seeking help in this area is not so large. Therefore only large veterinary centers can afford to organize such surveys.
Dogs are naturally gifted with the ability to easily rely on their senses other than hearing. Animals with congenital deafness never experience the sensation of sound, and therefore do not know that they are deaf and are somehow different from other dogs. In other words, it doesn't bother them at all. This should be remembered by especially suspicious owners who are trying to restore their pet’s hearing in a variety of ways, especially since the percentage of the probability of hearing restoration in dogs in this case tends to zero.
Acquired deafness usually develops gradually, unless a traumatic factor is to blame. Therefore, most owners do not discover for a very long time that their pet is increasingly losing hearing, until it completely stops responding to sound stimuli. And even in this case, a visit to the veterinary clinic may not be planned.
Dogs tend to show more obvious symptoms of hearing loss than cats. In addition, gradually developing acquired hearing loss is always more difficult to determine than congenital hearing loss. We list the main signs of deafness in dogs that the owner may notice. It should be remembered that puppies normally begin to respond to sound stimuli at approximately two weeks of age.
More than 50 breeds are predisposed to congenital deafness. Among others are Dalmatian, Akita, American Staffordshire Terrier, Australian Heeler, Australian Shepherd, Beagle, Border Collie, Boston Terrier, Boxer, Bull Terrier, Dachshund, Miniature Pinscher, Dogo Argentino, English Bulldog, English Setter, Fox Terrier, German Shepherd and others.
It is immediately worth noting that today there are no therapeutic or surgical methods for treating deafness in dogs. All care regimens are mainly aimed at preventing progressive loss of hearing quality, if possible. An exception may be rare cases when a dog begins to hear poorly due to accumulated sulfur-dust masses in the external auditory canal. Some hearing may also be preserved if the cause is infectious otitis media that is properly treated.
Congenital deafness in dogs cannot be treated at all. Puppies born with limited or no hearing will always be unable to detect sound waves throughout their lives. Some veterinary centers and other highly specialized institutions offer individual hearing aids for dogs with disabilities hearing, but it is very expensive and largely useless for the patients themselves.
Finally, here are a few facts about deaf dogs. Perhaps our readers will find them interesting and useful.
So, deaf dogs:
Sometimes the owners of their pets face quite unpleasant problem- deafness in dogs. If this happens, most likely your four-legged friend has hearing problems. There is both congenital and acquired deafness in dogs.
Deafness can be partial or complete. Hearing problems in an animal are quite difficult to determine, especially if the deafness is one-sided. The inability to hear sometimes has a neurological nature, and sometimes other reasons. Your pet may be deaf in one or both ears - this is unilateral or bilateral hearing loss.
If the animal has difficulty hearing, it should be shown to an experienced specialist. The veterinarian will be able to assess the quality of hearing based on sound stimuli. An in-depth and thorough examination may be necessary to determine the cause of your pet's hearing loss. A problem with only one ear can be diagnosed with confidence only in veterinary hospitals using special equipment. People who don't raise dogs may not notice deafness right away.
The most common causes of deafness are injuries or infections in the ear. Some puppies are already born with no hearing - this is called congenital deafness. Typically, a puppy begins to respond to sound stimuli 2 weeks after birth. Experienced breeders can determine this pathology not difficult. They identify deaf puppies before giving them to new owners.
There are many reasons why a puppy or adult cannot hear. Let's list some of them:
If your pet has stopped responding to your voice, commands, loud noise, screaming, do not try to treat the dog yourself by reading advice on forums on the Internet. The reasons why an animal has hearing problems can only be determined by veterinary clinic. If your dog begins to hear poorly, careful diagnosis and treatment will be required.
In addition to hearing, a dog can rely on vision and smell. Those animals that are accustomed to deafness from childhood do not feel inferior and different from their other brothers. Lack of hearing doesn't bother them. Unfortunately, restoring your pet's hearing will be almost impossible. The owner should take this for granted and not try to restore hearing by any means.
If a dog is injured, deafness may occur immediately. This will be clearly visible and understandable. In the case when a pet loses hearing gradually, the owner may not detect this for a long time and may not react to it properly.
Some tips on how to understand that your pet has become hard of hearing:
Some breeds have a hereditary predisposition to hearing problems. These breeds, for example, include the Boston Terrier, German Shepherd, dachshund, English bulldog and others.
You can find out that a dog has lost its hearing by obvious and indirect signs. Obvious ones include the animal’s complete ignoring of sound stimuli. Indirect signs include general deviations from the animal’s usual behavior - longer sleep, decreased activity. If the hearing loss is one-sided, it is very difficult to notice the presence of a problem. To determine the exact reasons that caused hearing loss, you need to consult a specialist.
Neurological examinations and timely examinations of your pet will help you understand why he is losing his hearing. An owner trying to independently determine the cause of deafness in his pet may lose required time to successfully resolve the problem if it can be fixed. This applies primarily to injuries and infectious diseases.
Today, unfortunately, it is almost impossible to cure deafness in a dog - all therapeutic and surgical methods will not give results. The help that can be provided to your pet is to stop the progressive loss of hearing and influence the quality of the remaining hearing. Positive results Treatment can only be provided if the cause of hearing loss is the external auditory canal clogged with sulfur and dirt.
Sometimes it is possible to preserve part of the hearing when the cause of the disease lies in infectious otitis media. Congenital deafness in a four-legged friend cannot be cured at all. A puppy who was born with complete or partial absence hearing, will never be able to recognize sound wave. Sometimes, in very rare cases, hearing aids can help solve the problem. But such special devices are very expensive and often do not justify themselves.
Treatment of deafness in dogs is prescribed only after a comprehensive study and study of test results. Sometimes the reason, fortunately, is easily removable. The accumulated wax and wax are removed from the ear opening, and the animal gains hearing.
Clean the ear opening with utmost care so as not to damage the eardrum. Cleaning is carried out by a veterinarian using cotton applicators. Very heavily soiled ears sometimes have to be cleaned under general anesthesia.
For inflammatory and infectious diseases, the dog is given antibiotics and ear drops are placed. special drugs. To rid an animal of bilateral deafness, they may prescribe drug treatment, surgery. If these steps do not produce the desired results, a hearing aid may be recommended.
To get things going again ordinary life With an animal that has lost hearing, it will take some time and a lot of patience. It is not so much the dog that must retrain as its owner. For example, a very “elderly” animal strives to reduce its time active image life to a passive and comfortable one. Such a dog will not experience significant anxiety with complete or partial hearing loss. The owner is obliged to do everything possible to help the pet adapt to the new realities of his life.
Sometimes the owner is deceived and thinks that the hearing has improved. For example, a dog may not react to the shaking of the floor, but to the sound of footsteps itself. Therefore, it is better to help your dog adapt by following a few simple recommendations.
A dog's deafness is not a death sentence for the animal. Help your four-legged friend better adapt to new conditions. Love, care and patience will help provide your pet with a comfortable and happy life.
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Quite often, dogs experience a persistent weakening of hearing, up to its complete absence - deafness. This pathology is a violation of the perception of sounds of the surrounding world. Sudden hearing loss and progression of pathology cannot escape the attention of the owner, since in this case the pet’s behavior changes significantly. The dog, which previously obeyed unquestioningly, responded to its name, and was frightened by fireworks, suddenly ceases to understand commands, does not respond to a familiar voice, and becomes indifferent to the sounds of fireworks. Such changes clearly indicate a sharp decline in the quality of hearing, and this cannot leave the owner indifferent. Why did this happen, how to recognize deafness and what needs to be done in such a case? We will examine these questions in this article.
Deafness in dogs is classified according to several criteria:
The causes of congenital deafness in a dog can be the following:
It is very important to identify a hereditary pathology in a dog in a timely manner, since it is permanent and cannot be treated. Such animals are excluded from the breeding program and are not allowed to breed, so as not to deteriorate the quality of the breed.
This type of deafness is associated with the presence of defective genes. As in cats, it occurs where there is white pigmentation. Dogs have two similar genes: the merle gene (can be found in collies, American Foxhounds, and Old English Sheepdogs) and the piebald (spotted) gene. It can be possessed by (bull terriers, English setters, Dalmatians, bulldogs). The presence of “forbidden” genes is the main cause of impaired blood supply to the cochlea in the first days after the birth of a puppy. At this time, his ear canals are still closed. The cochlea cells soon die, and the dog develops hearing problems for life.
Probability percentage hereditary pathology hearing loss is especially high in dogs at risk, which includes:
The dog may become deaf later in life. Acquired deafness has various reasons. Depending on them, it is divided into several types:
With unilateral hearing loss, one ear is affected, and with bilateral hearing loss, both are involved. At home, it is difficult to determine the nature of involvement. For such diagnostics, there is special equipment in veterinary clinics.
Deafness in dogs can be temporary or permanent, depending on what disease it is a symptom of. If the primary pathology does not lead to irreversible changes in the body, then hearing will gradually be restored. The most common cause of temporary deafness is ear plugs.
Permanent deafness can develop as a result of complications of infectious diseases, traumatic lesions, tumor pathologies (leading to irreversible changes), as well as hereditary and senile deafness.
Sudden deafness got its name because of its rapid development. It can be caused by some viruses, oncological diseases, injuries and circulatory disorders in the ear structures. With this type of deafness, in some cases, the animal’s ability to hear may be fully or partially restored after some period of time.
Acute deafness – develops as a symptom of a disease occurring in acute form. Hearing deterioration can progress over several days, after which it is replaced by complete deafness.
Chronic hearing loss develops over several months. It can be stable or progressive.
The main causes of deafness in dogs are:
No less detrimental to dog ears is prolonged stay in an area where the noise level exceeds the norm (living near railway tracks). Quite often hearing is affected in hunting dogs.
Hearing loss for a dog in old age is not so catastrophic. Having lived with her owner all her life, she got used to watching the changes in his facial expression, sometimes reading his lips. Good prevention senile hearing loss and deafness – timely treatment otitis media
Congenital deafness is not felt by dogs because they have never known what sound is. They are accustomed to relying on other senses and achieve perfection in this. Congenital deafness does not bother them at all.
Determining the hearing status of animals is important for breeders, since animals with congenital hearing impairment are not allowed to be bred. At an early age, puppies are tested using special test"BAER". This test allows you to determine the presence of deviations with a high percentage of accuracy. It involves measuring the bioelectrical response of the brain stem to various types of sounds presented to the dog in each ear through headphones. Animals that show poor test results are excluded from the breeding program and are not allowed to breed.
If a dog becomes deaf at a later age, this can be determined by the characteristics of its behavior. There are signs that indicate that the dog cannot hear at all:
If deafness is suspected, the animal is taken to a veterinarian. Competent diagnostics can only be done by a doctor in a clinical setting. After checking the dog’s reaction to sound stimuli, he will prescribe additional examination to diagnose disorders that cause deafness:
Congenital deafness cannot be cured. In most cases, the dog adapts to its position while still childhood and does not suffer from his lack. Personalized hearing medications can sometimes be used, but they are often disruptive and are not always well received by dogs.
Treatment of acquired deafness is aimed at eliminating the main causes of the disease, identified during diagnosis:
The main preventive measures are as follows:
In addition, before purchasing a puppy, you should always ask the breeder whether its parents had hearing impairments. This is especially true for representatives of certain breeds and merle dogs that are predisposed to congenital deafness. It is also worth checking the baby's hearing status. To do this, make a loud sound (for example, slamming a door). Lack of reaction is a clear indication that the dog has very poor hearing.
