Coping with a deaf dog

After months of close observations, it's become apparent that my writing assistant is suffering from partial deafness. It appears to be in his middle range, as he still responds to high-pitch or low sounding noise. My normal speaking tone falls into the void. To be fair, after nearly thirteen years together - I don't blame him for switching off to my jabbering!

He's been my constant companion, whilst I've written each of my published books. Though he sat beside me without passing judgement during my early attempts too. 

It's quite sad seeing him jump in surprise when he doesn't hear me approach or on waking, when I have to tap or stroke him to gain his attention. He's always been an attentive dog, but now his little button eyes rarely leave my face. I'm grateful that his puppy training had included hand gestures, as it's these which I'm now relying on. Though he's clearly learnt to cope by knowing my routines and associating specific objects as signals anticipating commands, actions and events throughout our day. I suspect he's probably been doing that for a while, before I realised the issue. Good job the opening of his 'treats' cupboard doesn't appear to be affected - now, that would be a disaster!

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks but I beg to differ; he's responding nicely to a range of new hand signals and whistles.  

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