Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Catch-22
As the months pass we are learning more and more how to communicate with Sol. Sol isn't just hard of hearing, she is completely deaf. At first I wasn't convinced, but after observing her since she arrived there have been numerous occasions when she doesn't even flinch an ear when loud sounds occur.
The main thing that we have learned is that Sol is very in tune with vibrations. Before we learned this, if she was looking away and we wanted to get her attention we would have to walk over to her and giver he a little tap so she would look our way. But through a little experimentation we quickly learned that if you stomp your feet, she will pick up on the vibrations and turn your way.
The only problem with the stomp your feet attention method is that it freaks Luna out. Feet stomping, kicking, or any other sudden movement with your feet causes Luna to immediately drop to the floor, her bellying touching the ground, and cower. The fast moving feet issue is the lone issue that has carried over from her previous life. As an added bonus, Luna has very poor vision, which makes it even easier to startle the little one.
So, the method to get the deaf dog's attention sends the blind dog into a panic.
As much as I love the feet stomping method to get Sol's attention, you can only use it if you are 100% sure that Luna is not in the room. I feel like a Venn Diagram is in order to help illustrate when it is appropriate to use the feet stomping method to get Sol's attention. Then I could file it away with all the eye drops spreadsheets we have for Luna.
