Reviews of Deaf/Blind/blind-deaf Dog and Dog Behavior Books & a few Web sites
(other books were listed without reviews)
A Critique Review of DrG M Strain's "Deafness in Dogs and Cats", 2011, Publisher CABI, UK; Available as hardcover and soft, prices are stiff: from Amazon.com, et al (see separate Weebly pages - click on link--> LINK)
Holly Gets a New Home (Holly – The Deaf Dalmatian), by Lisa Martin, 2010
Trafford Publishing; $14; Available at Amazon books. Our copy was reviewed by two girls, ages 8 and 10, and a 3d grade boy; plus two sets of parents. The story-line is basically sweet and traditional - a lonely puppy gets adopted into a good home and lives happily ever afterward with her people and other dogs. Our reviewer kids and adults thought the author’s casual treatment of the pup’s deafness was a gentle way to show kids that deafness of a pup (or another child) is an unimportant way to be different from ordinary puppies and children. Use of gestures for communication between the people and the puppy was mentioned as an obvious fact of life in living with a deaf puppy. All of the illustrations were excellent for the topic, amusing and well planned to attract the attention of kids. In the opinion of our book reviewers, the book’s “image” of Dalmatians was wholesome and enthusiastic. I would expect it to sell well during the holidays. For our reviewers, the treatment by the author and illustrator resulted that readers paid no special attention to the mention of rescue as being any different from buying from a breeder, or took any negative reaction to deafness as a "disability." Our reviewers felt that there was no special emphasis on training- just the usual "puppies need to be trained."
Book #2: Holly Learns Sign Language (Holly – The Deaf Dalmatian), by Lisa Martin, 2011
Trafford Publishing, available at Amazon books. The author’s casual treatment of the pup’s deafness was a gentle way to show kids that deafness of a pup (or another child) is an unimportant way to be different from ordinary puppies and children. Daily human and dog body language and gestures for communicating between the people and the puppy (and children) was treated as an obvious minor fact of life for a deaf puppy (or child). The illustrations, especially for body-language, were excellent, amusing and well planned to get the attention of kids and adults. In the opinion of our book reviewers, the book’s “image” of Dalmatians and children was wholesome and enthusiastic. For reviewers, the author’s and illustrator’s visual story-telling graphics of socializing and training a puppy seemed to ring true for any breed - unequalled in any dog-literature known to us. For children, the “message” they got seemed to be mostly that if a spotted puppy could happily learn lots of strange new ways to play (and communicate), then so could they!
Amazing Gracie (A Dog’s Tale), by Dan Dye and Mark Beckloff, 2000, Workman Publishing, NY; Available at Amazon.com. A wonderful book based on a deaf white Great Dane puppy who helped two men (with several other dogs) to create a new business and good lives for them all. Technical information new to me was provided without any special fanfare. Page 163 dscribed some of her sounds-songs. The book is excellent, with content good for all ages.
The Deaf Dogs Classic
Susan Cope Becker, "Living with a Deaf Dog", 1997; self-published by Susan Becker: This is the ideal book for a person who had zero earlier experience with deaf dogs. It was generally excellent for beginners of all ages, except for the misleading "scare-stories" mentioned on Ms Becker's pages 29-31.
Deaf-Life Cover Story; “Deaf dogs and the people they own: being seen and heard” pages 20-43, April 2011; MSM Productions Ltd; www.deaflife.com ; Editor-in-Chief Mathew Moore, Copy Editor Linda Levitan; A unique valuable, well written contribution documenting responses from the lives of real people for actual happy deaf dogs. Substantially rebuts with facts the deaf-dogs scare-stories.
A Blind (plus blind-deaf and low-vison) Dogs Classic
Caroline D. Levin RN, "Living With Blind Dogs", 1998-2003 edt, Lantern Publications: This is an excellent resource book for blind, blind-deaf and low-vision dogs and their people. It is a comprehensive book for beginners (regardless of age) or the cause of the dog's vision losses. It provides a brief clear sketch on the basics of how vision works and what can go wrong but properly omits details unneeded for vision impaired dogs to live well with humans. Caroline focuses on the methods and tools, which she portrays with clear text and photos. She urges humanely that people use certain collar styles that can save the lives of the dogs and their people during the confused moments of the early days and weeks of educating each dog in its new home with new people - safety and security are vital when training an anxious, confused rescued dog that might weigh nearly as much as its new Lady and possessing far greater pulling power if panicked.
Senechal, “Dogs Can Sign, Too: A Breakthrough Method for Teaching Your Dog to Communicate,” 2009; Random House; Unique Book for Teaching your dogs to Sign to you! Yes, your dog can learn to tell you what her needs are, and where it hursts if she is in pain .... We've taught our deaf dog to signal use with her own gestures to communicate with us. <www.animalsign.org >
Alexandra Semyonova , "The 100 Silliest Things People Say About Dogs", 2009, Hastings Press, England, a brilliant very readable serious book. Her advice were based on her research and hands-on experience during a 15 year span with many dogs and breeds and a wide variety of people. We assessed her recommendations; she earned a very high score.
Alexandra Semyonova (2003) The social organization of the domestic dog; a longitudinal study of domestic canine behavior and the ontogeny of domestic canine social systems. The Carriage House Foundation, The Hague, Netherlands. www.nonlineardogs.com (2006 version) An excellent research report that repays careful study.
Adam Miklosi, “Dog Behaviour, Evolution, and Cognition”, 2007, Oxford Biology; Possibly the best review of dog-science today. Comprehensive. The dog-human mutual abilities and behvior are the core for modern dogs and their owners. Excellent reference book. Also an excellent video by Adam was at: <http://video.pbs.org/video/1488005229/>
Stanley Coren, "How Dogs Think", 2004, Free Press; Very readable, an over-view review of vital information, but sometimes slightly inconsistent
Virginia Broitman, “Bow Wow” 2010, clicker training DVDs, positive reinforcement to teach skills and tricks; www.takeabowwow.com She trained our deaf dog, who four years later retains all of the lessons!
Scientific American journal, February 2013, pages 31; about brain combining information from hearing, sight, scents, and other 'senses.' --"Brain Cells for Grandmother". The article mentioned described MRI experiments done on humans [In my opinion the same biologies as in our dogs]. They seem to report that human brains combine the hearing, sight, scent & others "signals" in specific "brain-patches" - - combining somehow results from whatever senses the particular person has that are working. *** So person [or dog's] brain combines the vibration (sound) signals it gets from the inner-ear nerves of each ear PLUS vibrations (sound) detected by their skin, hair, signals from the eyes and so on - - - This seems to be the entire explanation of how old dogs who become inner-ear deaf like humans actually almost never have much difficulty. Likewise, when dogs become blind in old age (SARD, or PRA), the dogs adapt amazingly quick to relying on sounds and smells - - - because [according to the SCI AM report] - their brains already years before learned to use all the senses together in their brains. - SO creating BAER test which only evaluates the nerve connections to the brain of one of the 8 or 9 sound detectors that dogs and people have. [That was like as if the BAER expert claimed I'm deaf if I can get cell-phone calls but I can't get old-fashioned copper wire telephone calls after somebody cut the wires to my old land-line phone - - !]
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=making-sense-world-sveral-senses-at-time
Downloaded 21 dec 2012 : [Preview] A Confederacy of Senses – Jan 2013 Scientific American In the past three decades studies in psychology and neuroscience have revealed that the brain is an extensively multisensory organ that constantly melds information from the sight, touch, inner-ear hearing, vibration(sound) detection by whiskers, nose temperature, scent and other senses [sic, sensory modalities, see Dr Coren, 2004]. By 2012, scientists better understand the function of the brain. If a sense is lost, another fills in to do the task: some blind people who are blind can train their hearing to play double duty. Ones who become both blind and deaf can use touch to partially replace.... (see “Edges of Perception,” by Ariel Bleicher, Scientific American Mind, March/April 2012.)
John Scott and John Fuller, “Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog,” 1965, University of Chicago Press; A "gold-mine" of observations and insights, possibly the best of its era for scope, duration, depth and rigor- covering several breeds.
Barry Eaton, "Dominance in Dogs? Fact or Fiction?"; 2010; Dogwise Publishers; Super readable, demolishes the Dog-is Wolf fantasys with facts and humor. Possibly one of the best for new owners of ordinary, deaf and or blind dogs who might be anxious about training and what to expect from normal dogs.
Amy Shojai, "Complete Care for Your Aging Dog"; 2003; New American Library; Excellent material for blind dogs, and deaf dogs except for her repeating of misleading "myths" or hoaxes realitically attributed to Dr Strain (see page of this site 'Tragedy- Hoax, Marketing, Errors")
"The Official Book of the Deaf Dalmatians", about 1996, by the Dalmatian Club of America; It is a valuable review of what the accomplishments and personalites of the trained, socialized, exercised hearing brothers and sisters of the abused untrained unsocialized almost unexercised deaf dogs described in the Deaf Dogs Scare Stories. The book was well illustrated and written. It contains valuable information about the DCA failed BAER based pogrom for eliminating their deaf puppies, nearly 400,000 since about 1986 according to data in part from the Veterinary News. Buy at Amazon, used?
Davis, M and Bunnel, M; “Working like Dogs, The Service Dog Guidebook”; 2007, Alpine Publishers, Crawford, Co; alpinepub.com - - An excellent comprehensive book.
Raymond and Lorna Coppinger, “Dogs; A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origins, Behavior & Evolution” , Scribner, 2001. Excellent discussion on ethics of human relations with dogs. Uneven quality limited by their experience and prejudices about dog-science and research. Severe errors on puppies.
C. Cobb and H Goldwhite, "Creations of Fire", 1995; An excellent realistic survey of the origins and most key events with the personalities and varied circumstances of the women and men who made it happen, (and-or funded it.) These authors described the reality of the worlds in which real progress was made, overturning the then-consensus accepted politcally correct peer-reviewed "good enough" axioms, doctrines and fantasies such as phlogiston. Commonly at first the innovators suffered the slings and arrows of public-media fed by the incumbents of science Royal Societies and journals. As Max B, allegedly said, 'Sometimes you have to wait a generation a generation for the old [!@#!$] die before scientific advances are accepted widely. {See review of, T S Kuhn, 1996, below.}
T.S.Kuhn," The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (Paperback - Dec 15, 1996); A thoroughly depressing book that ought to drive away from science, biology, mathematics and ethology any young person with the an imagined interest in glory from "doing science", but short of understanding that to milk a cow one most first feed it at one end and clean up at the other. It ain't all glory and Nobel Prizes.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blinddogs: Unquestionably the all-round best for blind and blind-deaf dogs; over 5,000 members; wide range of expertise and nearly every breed. Also excellent is http://blindogs.com - they describe where possible toys of blind and blind-deaf dogs, and places where some are sold. ---- over 5,000 members
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/blind-deaf-dogs: Also Excellent is the deaf-blind dogs ownerslist! These people are always kind, polite and as helpful as they can possibly be. - - - over 1,000 members
www.deafdogsneedavoice.com An excellent Web site. A lovely site displaying many breeds of well trained well socialized deaf dogs, from many places and many people. After a while, for a visit to a Horror show, try the button for the DCA Red Book which will take you directly to the probable sources of the infamous scare stories about deaf dogs which were misrepresent as true for all Breeds - actually though the stories were of abused untrained unsocialized under-exercised, probably mostly crate-equivalent confined Dalmatian hearing and-or deaf (50 %) dogs living in their own poop.
www.deafdogs.org; vintage 1998 with occasional updates; Possibly the most comprehensive general purpose non-science site for deaf dogs, and with a bunch of good stuff for blind and blind-deaf dogs also. Generally the pages about training and specific health concerns remained valuable. Please don’t be “put-off” by the “dead” page-links such as “polls”, “surveys”, picnics (two of six links were live on 27 Apr 2011), and “merchandise” (per Yahoo list complaints of non-response to orders). In April 2011 several shortfalls needed updates or deletions: 1) < http://www.deafdogs.org/faq/myths.php > attributed perhaps rather unfairly the origin of all the deaf-dogs scare (myths?, aka “lies?”) stories to an apparently free-lance journalist who wrote on a variety of topics => ... “ Myths and Misinformation Regarding Deaf Dogs; Based on the original text by Leslie Judkins”. Examination in detail of Leslie’s deaf dogs articles available on the Web revealed a technically impressive statistical correlation with the text and probable biases apparent in the DCA Governor’s 1994 approved Red Book. So it seems that alleged devotees and defenders of deaf dogs worldwide converted an interesting press squib into what many people by 2012 consider a set of infamous defamations of all deaf dogs and their owners. At the same time the Web site’s use of their FAQs> Myths was an excellent example of making “lemonade”- training advice- out of the extremely misleading deaf-dogs Myth-hoaxes. 2) The material about BAER tests was substantially obsolete because of apparent deficiencies in the authors grasp of the fundamental flaw of dog-BAER testing which assumed that all dogs are humans, and limited to exclusive reliance on the human frequency ranges of inner-ear cochlea nerves; as described on other pages of deafdogsforever from discussions of 2004 S Coren and other scientists who described research that demonstrated that typical dogs have eight or nine mechanisms for detecting mechanical vibrations (sound), whereas human ordinarily exclusively rely on inner-ear cochlea (BAER-test). Further, long term recovery or development of useful hearing by genetically deaf dogs and accident deafened dogs was documented by us and by other people in the US and other countries as distant as Canada and Australia. Thus except for legal use about injuries in accidents or occupational conditions , BAER testing was by 2011 known in the scientific community to serve limited purposes of pass/fail certifying of dogs, where failure despite the limitations of the tests was often a basis for a strong recommendation to the owner that the dog be PTS (killed). By 2012 there were an increasing number of reports from owners whose dogs were BAER certified as bilateral hearing on their second or perhaps a later BAER test. 3) The discussion of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) omitted mention of the documented link of deafness-genetics such as double merle to retina debris and bleeding within the eyes and the resulting “chasing invisible flies”, “bugs on the wall” and related behaviors that can be alleviated by medication, training and socialization.
<//pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/deafdogs> A valuable site ONLY FOR brand new owners of deaf dogs. Mainly day to day a social and rescue network for a few authoritarian moderators and old-timers sadly limited who seem often in pursuit of personal agendas and "scoring points" on each other. Complain were numerous through September 2012 by members whose religion, politics, use of long words or interest in the progress of training methods and research beneficial to deaf dogs excited the hostility of moderators. By 5 June 2012 so far as we can learn, the "best and brightest" departed for friendly places where people help and support each other for the sake of their dogs and other good people. The reported policy of referring complaints or concerns to the moderators left no visible recourse for bullied members except to unsubscribe, to go to places where they were welcome. Technically, complaints could be escalated to the parent YAHOO offices, if the offended list member believed that the YAHOO "Terms of Service" were violated by the moderators.
www.thedca.org/redbook.html:"The Red Book" - The Dalmatian Club of America's Informational [sic, marketing and advertising] brochure regarding Dalmatians, Approved by the Board of Governors of the DCA, 16 October 1994, 3d edition; allegedly updated in 2005 although no changes of substantive Board approved content were claimed. Printed on standard letter paper it was 19 pages. Printer page 11 dealt with their "DCA Statement on Deafness". Printed page 12 began the "DCA Ethical Guidelines", which appeared still through the year 2012 in various formats on DCA proposed draft legal documents, etc. Page 13, included Ethics item #15 (the list number varies in other DCA sources) which requires “... all advertising is factual and not misleading. To never engage in malicious criticism and to separate fact from fiction before repeating comments heard from others. .." It was the opinion of our reviewers that the Red Book is in apparently doubtless violation of the Ethics Guideline mentioned here, from the Red Book.
www.thedca.org/deaf1.html : "Position on Dalmatian Deafness from the Board of Governors of the DCA"; allegedly updated 21, Dec, 2007 although the substantive contents appeared to be unchanged since about 1994 per comparison to the Red Book, (downloaded 18 Jan 2012). It was the opinion of our reviewers that the Red Book was in apparent violation of the Ethics Guidelines mentioned in the Red Book.
www.d2care.org/: Reviewers concluded from the information on its web site as late as 5 June 2012 that the group has become an annual renewal ($15 per year) social and rescue membership group. Some of the members of its first Board of Directors were in the past openly hostile to efforts through other Web sites to enhance the well being of deaf dogs by means of science and research. Their "mission statement" on the web site (8 June 2012) did NOT correspond to their legal “charter” on their site that alleged they would support pertinent dogs’ research. The mission statement in early June 2012 omitted mention of supporting deaf dogs’ research. Reviewers learned that earlier the site quoted a press release about research of cat brains. Despite the alleged letter from the d2care BOD [see http://www.d2care.org/news/?m=201010] to the AKC BOD asserting that the people who were unelected “moderators” of the Yahoo-deafdogs site and members of the d2care BOD were the “foremost authority” [sic, possibly from the world-wide membership of the Yahoo deaf dogs list they felt themselves to be the world-wide foremost authorities?] and most knowledgeable concerning deaf dogs’ abilities. We found no publicly accessible evidence of their research of deaf dogs’ capability and behavior. Not a site that in our opinion might be useful to people interested in science research findings regarding the abilities of deaf dogs.
Dr George M Strain; "Deafness in Dogs and Cats", 2011, CABI publisher, UK; [See peer-review indepth on the LINKED Web pages; In summary, although as a compendium of deaf dog biology the book was OK, the deaf dog behavioral information in the opinion of the reviewers appeared to be primarily a restating of the DCA Board of Governors policies of 1994 that described effective procedures for rendering deaf Dalmatians and deaf dogs of other breeds dangerous to themselves and others, and leading to the killing of deaf puppies.]
Good Sources about Dog Behaviors and Evolution
Dr Konrad Lorenz, Nobel Prize Winner; “Behind the Mirror,” Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973; “The Foundation of Ethology”, Springer-Verlag, 1981; “On Aggression,” Harcourt Books; 1963
Stephen Jay Gould; “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, W W Norton; 1994;
also consider his books and papers- Punctuated Evolution
Charles Darwin; “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life;” 1859
Scientific American <www.nature.com/scientificamerican/index.html: evolution of birds and mammals – highly readable for a general audience
Other Sources (use with care: Some good stuff, some incomplete or wronf.)
Alexandra Horowitz; "Inside of a Dog"; Scribner; 2000
Return to the TOP of the page, click here:
Holly Gets a New Home (Holly – The Deaf Dalmatian), by Lisa Martin, 2010
Trafford Publishing; $14; Available at Amazon books. Our copy was reviewed by two girls, ages 8 and 10, and a 3d grade boy; plus two sets of parents. The story-line is basically sweet and traditional - a lonely puppy gets adopted into a good home and lives happily ever afterward with her people and other dogs. Our reviewer kids and adults thought the author’s casual treatment of the pup’s deafness was a gentle way to show kids that deafness of a pup (or another child) is an unimportant way to be different from ordinary puppies and children. Use of gestures for communication between the people and the puppy was mentioned as an obvious fact of life in living with a deaf puppy. All of the illustrations were excellent for the topic, amusing and well planned to attract the attention of kids. In the opinion of our book reviewers, the book’s “image” of Dalmatians was wholesome and enthusiastic. I would expect it to sell well during the holidays. For our reviewers, the treatment by the author and illustrator resulted that readers paid no special attention to the mention of rescue as being any different from buying from a breeder, or took any negative reaction to deafness as a "disability." Our reviewers felt that there was no special emphasis on training- just the usual "puppies need to be trained."
Book #2: Holly Learns Sign Language (Holly – The Deaf Dalmatian), by Lisa Martin, 2011
Trafford Publishing, available at Amazon books. The author’s casual treatment of the pup’s deafness was a gentle way to show kids that deafness of a pup (or another child) is an unimportant way to be different from ordinary puppies and children. Daily human and dog body language and gestures for communicating between the people and the puppy (and children) was treated as an obvious minor fact of life for a deaf puppy (or child). The illustrations, especially for body-language, were excellent, amusing and well planned to get the attention of kids and adults. In the opinion of our book reviewers, the book’s “image” of Dalmatians and children was wholesome and enthusiastic. For reviewers, the author’s and illustrator’s visual story-telling graphics of socializing and training a puppy seemed to ring true for any breed - unequalled in any dog-literature known to us. For children, the “message” they got seemed to be mostly that if a spotted puppy could happily learn lots of strange new ways to play (and communicate), then so could they!
Amazing Gracie (A Dog’s Tale), by Dan Dye and Mark Beckloff, 2000, Workman Publishing, NY; Available at Amazon.com. A wonderful book based on a deaf white Great Dane puppy who helped two men (with several other dogs) to create a new business and good lives for them all. Technical information new to me was provided without any special fanfare. Page 163 dscribed some of her sounds-songs. The book is excellent, with content good for all ages.
The Deaf Dogs Classic
Susan Cope Becker, "Living with a Deaf Dog", 1997; self-published by Susan Becker: This is the ideal book for a person who had zero earlier experience with deaf dogs. It was generally excellent for beginners of all ages, except for the misleading "scare-stories" mentioned on Ms Becker's pages 29-31.
Deaf-Life Cover Story; “Deaf dogs and the people they own: being seen and heard” pages 20-43, April 2011; MSM Productions Ltd; www.deaflife.com ; Editor-in-Chief Mathew Moore, Copy Editor Linda Levitan; A unique valuable, well written contribution documenting responses from the lives of real people for actual happy deaf dogs. Substantially rebuts with facts the deaf-dogs scare-stories.
A Blind (plus blind-deaf and low-vison) Dogs Classic
Caroline D. Levin RN, "Living With Blind Dogs", 1998-2003 edt, Lantern Publications: This is an excellent resource book for blind, blind-deaf and low-vision dogs and their people. It is a comprehensive book for beginners (regardless of age) or the cause of the dog's vision losses. It provides a brief clear sketch on the basics of how vision works and what can go wrong but properly omits details unneeded for vision impaired dogs to live well with humans. Caroline focuses on the methods and tools, which she portrays with clear text and photos. She urges humanely that people use certain collar styles that can save the lives of the dogs and their people during the confused moments of the early days and weeks of educating each dog in its new home with new people - safety and security are vital when training an anxious, confused rescued dog that might weigh nearly as much as its new Lady and possessing far greater pulling power if panicked.
Senechal, “Dogs Can Sign, Too: A Breakthrough Method for Teaching Your Dog to Communicate,” 2009; Random House; Unique Book for Teaching your dogs to Sign to you! Yes, your dog can learn to tell you what her needs are, and where it hursts if she is in pain .... We've taught our deaf dog to signal use with her own gestures to communicate with us. <www.animalsign.org >
Alexandra Semyonova , "The 100 Silliest Things People Say About Dogs", 2009, Hastings Press, England, a brilliant very readable serious book. Her advice were based on her research and hands-on experience during a 15 year span with many dogs and breeds and a wide variety of people. We assessed her recommendations; she earned a very high score.
Alexandra Semyonova (2003) The social organization of the domestic dog; a longitudinal study of domestic canine behavior and the ontogeny of domestic canine social systems. The Carriage House Foundation, The Hague, Netherlands. www.nonlineardogs.com (2006 version) An excellent research report that repays careful study.
Adam Miklosi, “Dog Behaviour, Evolution, and Cognition”, 2007, Oxford Biology; Possibly the best review of dog-science today. Comprehensive. The dog-human mutual abilities and behvior are the core for modern dogs and their owners. Excellent reference book. Also an excellent video by Adam was at: <http://video.pbs.org/video/1488005229/>
Stanley Coren, "How Dogs Think", 2004, Free Press; Very readable, an over-view review of vital information, but sometimes slightly inconsistent
Virginia Broitman, “Bow Wow” 2010, clicker training DVDs, positive reinforcement to teach skills and tricks; www.takeabowwow.com She trained our deaf dog, who four years later retains all of the lessons!
Scientific American journal, February 2013, pages 31; about brain combining information from hearing, sight, scents, and other 'senses.' --"Brain Cells for Grandmother". The article mentioned described MRI experiments done on humans [In my opinion the same biologies as in our dogs]. They seem to report that human brains combine the hearing, sight, scent & others "signals" in specific "brain-patches" - - combining somehow results from whatever senses the particular person has that are working. *** So person [or dog's] brain combines the vibration (sound) signals it gets from the inner-ear nerves of each ear PLUS vibrations (sound) detected by their skin, hair, signals from the eyes and so on - - - This seems to be the entire explanation of how old dogs who become inner-ear deaf like humans actually almost never have much difficulty. Likewise, when dogs become blind in old age (SARD, or PRA), the dogs adapt amazingly quick to relying on sounds and smells - - - because [according to the SCI AM report] - their brains already years before learned to use all the senses together in their brains. - SO creating BAER test which only evaluates the nerve connections to the brain of one of the 8 or 9 sound detectors that dogs and people have. [That was like as if the BAER expert claimed I'm deaf if I can get cell-phone calls but I can't get old-fashioned copper wire telephone calls after somebody cut the wires to my old land-line phone - - !]
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=making-sense-world-sveral-senses-at-time
Downloaded 21 dec 2012 : [Preview] A Confederacy of Senses – Jan 2013 Scientific American In the past three decades studies in psychology and neuroscience have revealed that the brain is an extensively multisensory organ that constantly melds information from the sight, touch, inner-ear hearing, vibration(sound) detection by whiskers, nose temperature, scent and other senses [sic, sensory modalities, see Dr Coren, 2004]. By 2012, scientists better understand the function of the brain. If a sense is lost, another fills in to do the task: some blind people who are blind can train their hearing to play double duty. Ones who become both blind and deaf can use touch to partially replace.... (see “Edges of Perception,” by Ariel Bleicher, Scientific American Mind, March/April 2012.)
John Scott and John Fuller, “Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog,” 1965, University of Chicago Press; A "gold-mine" of observations and insights, possibly the best of its era for scope, duration, depth and rigor- covering several breeds.
Barry Eaton, "Dominance in Dogs? Fact or Fiction?"; 2010; Dogwise Publishers; Super readable, demolishes the Dog-is Wolf fantasys with facts and humor. Possibly one of the best for new owners of ordinary, deaf and or blind dogs who might be anxious about training and what to expect from normal dogs.
Amy Shojai, "Complete Care for Your Aging Dog"; 2003; New American Library; Excellent material for blind dogs, and deaf dogs except for her repeating of misleading "myths" or hoaxes realitically attributed to Dr Strain (see page of this site 'Tragedy- Hoax, Marketing, Errors")
"The Official Book of the Deaf Dalmatians", about 1996, by the Dalmatian Club of America; It is a valuable review of what the accomplishments and personalites of the trained, socialized, exercised hearing brothers and sisters of the abused untrained unsocialized almost unexercised deaf dogs described in the Deaf Dogs Scare Stories. The book was well illustrated and written. It contains valuable information about the DCA failed BAER based pogrom for eliminating their deaf puppies, nearly 400,000 since about 1986 according to data in part from the Veterinary News. Buy at Amazon, used?
Davis, M and Bunnel, M; “Working like Dogs, The Service Dog Guidebook”; 2007, Alpine Publishers, Crawford, Co; alpinepub.com - - An excellent comprehensive book.
Raymond and Lorna Coppinger, “Dogs; A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origins, Behavior & Evolution” , Scribner, 2001. Excellent discussion on ethics of human relations with dogs. Uneven quality limited by their experience and prejudices about dog-science and research. Severe errors on puppies.
C. Cobb and H Goldwhite, "Creations of Fire", 1995; An excellent realistic survey of the origins and most key events with the personalities and varied circumstances of the women and men who made it happen, (and-or funded it.) These authors described the reality of the worlds in which real progress was made, overturning the then-consensus accepted politcally correct peer-reviewed "good enough" axioms, doctrines and fantasies such as phlogiston. Commonly at first the innovators suffered the slings and arrows of public-media fed by the incumbents of science Royal Societies and journals. As Max B, allegedly said, 'Sometimes you have to wait a generation a generation for the old [!@#!$] die before scientific advances are accepted widely. {See review of, T S Kuhn, 1996, below.}
T.S.Kuhn," The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (Paperback - Dec 15, 1996); A thoroughly depressing book that ought to drive away from science, biology, mathematics and ethology any young person with the an imagined interest in glory from "doing science", but short of understanding that to milk a cow one most first feed it at one end and clean up at the other. It ain't all glory and Nobel Prizes.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/blinddogs: Unquestionably the all-round best for blind and blind-deaf dogs; over 5,000 members; wide range of expertise and nearly every breed. Also excellent is http://blindogs.com - they describe where possible toys of blind and blind-deaf dogs, and places where some are sold. ---- over 5,000 members
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/blind-deaf-dogs: Also Excellent is the deaf-blind dogs ownerslist! These people are always kind, polite and as helpful as they can possibly be. - - - over 1,000 members
www.deafdogsneedavoice.com An excellent Web site. A lovely site displaying many breeds of well trained well socialized deaf dogs, from many places and many people. After a while, for a visit to a Horror show, try the button for the DCA Red Book which will take you directly to the probable sources of the infamous scare stories about deaf dogs which were misrepresent as true for all Breeds - actually though the stories were of abused untrained unsocialized under-exercised, probably mostly crate-equivalent confined Dalmatian hearing and-or deaf (50 %) dogs living in their own poop.
www.deafdogs.org; vintage 1998 with occasional updates; Possibly the most comprehensive general purpose non-science site for deaf dogs, and with a bunch of good stuff for blind and blind-deaf dogs also. Generally the pages about training and specific health concerns remained valuable. Please don’t be “put-off” by the “dead” page-links such as “polls”, “surveys”, picnics (two of six links were live on 27 Apr 2011), and “merchandise” (per Yahoo list complaints of non-response to orders). In April 2011 several shortfalls needed updates or deletions: 1) < http://www.deafdogs.org/faq/myths.php > attributed perhaps rather unfairly the origin of all the deaf-dogs scare (myths?, aka “lies?”) stories to an apparently free-lance journalist who wrote on a variety of topics => ... “ Myths and Misinformation Regarding Deaf Dogs; Based on the original text by Leslie Judkins”. Examination in detail of Leslie’s deaf dogs articles available on the Web revealed a technically impressive statistical correlation with the text and probable biases apparent in the DCA Governor’s 1994 approved Red Book. So it seems that alleged devotees and defenders of deaf dogs worldwide converted an interesting press squib into what many people by 2012 consider a set of infamous defamations of all deaf dogs and their owners. At the same time the Web site’s use of their FAQs> Myths was an excellent example of making “lemonade”- training advice- out of the extremely misleading deaf-dogs Myth-hoaxes. 2) The material about BAER tests was substantially obsolete because of apparent deficiencies in the authors grasp of the fundamental flaw of dog-BAER testing which assumed that all dogs are humans, and limited to exclusive reliance on the human frequency ranges of inner-ear cochlea nerves; as described on other pages of deafdogsforever from discussions of 2004 S Coren and other scientists who described research that demonstrated that typical dogs have eight or nine mechanisms for detecting mechanical vibrations (sound), whereas human ordinarily exclusively rely on inner-ear cochlea (BAER-test). Further, long term recovery or development of useful hearing by genetically deaf dogs and accident deafened dogs was documented by us and by other people in the US and other countries as distant as Canada and Australia. Thus except for legal use about injuries in accidents or occupational conditions , BAER testing was by 2011 known in the scientific community to serve limited purposes of pass/fail certifying of dogs, where failure despite the limitations of the tests was often a basis for a strong recommendation to the owner that the dog be PTS (killed). By 2012 there were an increasing number of reports from owners whose dogs were BAER certified as bilateral hearing on their second or perhaps a later BAER test. 3) The discussion of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) omitted mention of the documented link of deafness-genetics such as double merle to retina debris and bleeding within the eyes and the resulting “chasing invisible flies”, “bugs on the wall” and related behaviors that can be alleviated by medication, training and socialization.
<//pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/deafdogs> A valuable site ONLY FOR brand new owners of deaf dogs. Mainly day to day a social and rescue network for a few authoritarian moderators and old-timers sadly limited who seem often in pursuit of personal agendas and "scoring points" on each other. Complain were numerous through September 2012 by members whose religion, politics, use of long words or interest in the progress of training methods and research beneficial to deaf dogs excited the hostility of moderators. By 5 June 2012 so far as we can learn, the "best and brightest" departed for friendly places where people help and support each other for the sake of their dogs and other good people. The reported policy of referring complaints or concerns to the moderators left no visible recourse for bullied members except to unsubscribe, to go to places where they were welcome. Technically, complaints could be escalated to the parent YAHOO offices, if the offended list member believed that the YAHOO "Terms of Service" were violated by the moderators.
www.thedca.org/redbook.html:"The Red Book" - The Dalmatian Club of America's Informational [sic, marketing and advertising] brochure regarding Dalmatians, Approved by the Board of Governors of the DCA, 16 October 1994, 3d edition; allegedly updated in 2005 although no changes of substantive Board approved content were claimed. Printed on standard letter paper it was 19 pages. Printer page 11 dealt with their "DCA Statement on Deafness". Printed page 12 began the "DCA Ethical Guidelines", which appeared still through the year 2012 in various formats on DCA proposed draft legal documents, etc. Page 13, included Ethics item #15 (the list number varies in other DCA sources) which requires “... all advertising is factual and not misleading. To never engage in malicious criticism and to separate fact from fiction before repeating comments heard from others. .." It was the opinion of our reviewers that the Red Book is in apparently doubtless violation of the Ethics Guideline mentioned here, from the Red Book.
www.thedca.org/deaf1.html : "Position on Dalmatian Deafness from the Board of Governors of the DCA"; allegedly updated 21, Dec, 2007 although the substantive contents appeared to be unchanged since about 1994 per comparison to the Red Book, (downloaded 18 Jan 2012). It was the opinion of our reviewers that the Red Book was in apparent violation of the Ethics Guidelines mentioned in the Red Book.
www.d2care.org/: Reviewers concluded from the information on its web site as late as 5 June 2012 that the group has become an annual renewal ($15 per year) social and rescue membership group. Some of the members of its first Board of Directors were in the past openly hostile to efforts through other Web sites to enhance the well being of deaf dogs by means of science and research. Their "mission statement" on the web site (8 June 2012) did NOT correspond to their legal “charter” on their site that alleged they would support pertinent dogs’ research. The mission statement in early June 2012 omitted mention of supporting deaf dogs’ research. Reviewers learned that earlier the site quoted a press release about research of cat brains. Despite the alleged letter from the d2care BOD [see http://www.d2care.org/news/?m=201010] to the AKC BOD asserting that the people who were unelected “moderators” of the Yahoo-deafdogs site and members of the d2care BOD were the “foremost authority” [sic, possibly from the world-wide membership of the Yahoo deaf dogs list they felt themselves to be the world-wide foremost authorities?] and most knowledgeable concerning deaf dogs’ abilities. We found no publicly accessible evidence of their research of deaf dogs’ capability and behavior. Not a site that in our opinion might be useful to people interested in science research findings regarding the abilities of deaf dogs.
Dr George M Strain; "Deafness in Dogs and Cats", 2011, CABI publisher, UK; [See peer-review indepth on the LINKED Web pages; In summary, although as a compendium of deaf dog biology the book was OK, the deaf dog behavioral information in the opinion of the reviewers appeared to be primarily a restating of the DCA Board of Governors policies of 1994 that described effective procedures for rendering deaf Dalmatians and deaf dogs of other breeds dangerous to themselves and others, and leading to the killing of deaf puppies.]
Good Sources about Dog Behaviors and Evolution
Dr Konrad Lorenz, Nobel Prize Winner; “Behind the Mirror,” Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973; “The Foundation of Ethology”, Springer-Verlag, 1981; “On Aggression,” Harcourt Books; 1963
Stephen Jay Gould; “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History”, W W Norton; 1994;
also consider his books and papers- Punctuated Evolution
Charles Darwin; “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life;” 1859
Scientific American <www.nature.com/scientificamerican/index.html: evolution of birds and mammals – highly readable for a general audience
Other Sources (use with care: Some good stuff, some incomplete or wronf.)
Alexandra Horowitz; "Inside of a Dog"; Scribner; 2000
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