Thumbs up for Pixie

Check out this girl Pixie. She landed herself in a shelter, and her chances weren't so good because she is deaf. Lucky for her, Liz Grewal came along. Liz is a specialist in special needs dogs, especially deaf ones, and decided to foster Pixie. Since coming into her new temporary home, nine week old Pixie has learned ten sign language commands! Liz expects that Pixie could eventually have a vocabulary of 100 signals, and will make an exceptional pet.

Lots of folks are nervous about adopting a deaf dog, but even hearing dogs don't always listen! Deaf dogs can be trained with little extra work...in fact most dogs already respond to your hand signals, it is just that you also have a word to go along with it. Deaf dogs tend to stick right by you so that they can keep tabs on what you are doing, giving them the nickname "velcro dogs." Deaf dogs can make great pets for families, but Liz says they should be supervised around young kids because young children can make sudden and erratic movements that might startle the dog. Read the whole article for more info on deaf dogs.

And remember, "thumbs up" is the hand signal for "good dog"--see how easy this is?