The barking dog story
I have this very large Alsatian dog, that I lovingly called Jack when he first became a part of our family about five years ago. I must say that Jack filled all my wildest expectations; He is now at the age of five, a fine example of his breed. Yet when he was about 15 months old we faced the real prospect of having to get rid of him. The problem was that we couldn’t get Jack to stop barking. He would bark day and night at the slightest provocation. Our neighbours became less and less sympathetic and we were getting to our literal wits end. We tried everything to discover what was making Jack so anxious. Eventually our family vet came up with answer. Jack was partially deaf, so he was not used to hearing noises like you might expect. When he heard anything, he barked, mostly from being a little surprised. We had sent Jack for all kind of tests, but that was one we had never thought of. The deafness test was the vet’s idea. Known as the Baer test, it provided a totally accurate report into the Jack’s state of hearing. Once we discovered the problem we set about helping Jack, ourselves and our neighbors to live with this condition. We had to virtually retrain Jack with hand signals and desensitize him to the kind of noises he hears in the yard. I am happy to say that things worked out really fine.
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