CANINE
Why Do They Bark?
Morag Heirs discusses the reasons deaf and/or visually-impaired dogs may bark more than non-impaired dogs
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Bronte (white deaf and part-blind border collie) is using barking as a strategy to provoke play, or at least a reaction in other dogs
arking is a form of communication for all dogs so it is important that we spend some time thinking about why our dogs might be barking. Are they anxious, over-excited, upset, fearful, thrilled, frustrated? Something else? Avoid concentrating on stopping the barking (particularly through the use of ‘aversives,’ e.g. telling off, harsh signals, water spray or air sprays, exclusion from the room or crating on a regular basis) as this gets in the way of understanding why the barking is happening. Without understanding why our dog is barking, we run the risk of suppressing anxiety, for example, which will inevitably resurface in other ways.
Why the Barking?
Anecdotally, we can see from the Deaf Dog Network Facebook discussion group that many new deaf dog owners are worried about barking. We are regularly asked if deaf dogs bark and if their barks sound different from hearing dogs. As a deaf dog owner I can reassure you that deaf dogs most certainly do bark, and my deaf dogs bark more than any of my hearing dogs. A recent research paper indicates that, when surveyed, owners of hearing- or vision- impaired dogs reported more excessive barking than did owners of dogs who were not impaired (FarmerDougan et al., 2014). The tone of the bark can often sound different in hearing-impaired dogs (presumably due to lack of exposure to other dogs barking) and the vocalizations themselves can often include interesting variations, howls and squeaks. Some hearing-impaired dogs clearly recognize that barking can trigger a reliable response in either human or canine com34
BARKS from the Guild/November 2015
panions and so, just like a hearing dog, they may use barking as an attention-seeking behavior. I know of one almost completely deaf and partially-sighted dog who will stand at the top of a large echoing hallway to bark when she wants to play or just seems bored. Just as in our normal hearing/vision dogs, barking can also signal distress. These dogs may struggle more with separation-related anxiety, in part due to the often disrupted early months of their lives, but also because the deaf dog cannot hear that you are nearby. The visually-impaired dog may be able to hear you in the house but not physically locate you. We often see a degree of panic and the need to check where the family members are in the early days of bringing a deaf or visually- impaired dog into a new home. Using Bronte (pictured, above) as an example, she will frequently wake from a deep sleep, move purposefully over to where her human family is sitting and nose touch or sniff them before returning to her bed and going back to sleep. For all intents and purposes, this appears to be an essential check that the humans are still where they should be. Separating out types of barks is tricky even in normal hearing/vision dogs. An interesting study that counted the frequency of barks (rather than recorded tonal variations) failed to find different patterns which would allow for differentiation between boredom and separation distress. Thus, the fact that hearing-impaired dogs may bark differently is perhaps less of a barrier to interpretation that we first thought. The volume of barking, especially in hearing impaired dogs, can be very loud. We can hypothesize that this is due to the lack