We can't thank Larry LeoGrande owner of K9 Obedience Training enough!  He has done wonders with training our dog Molly.  Molly is a special beagle dog.  When we first picked her out of the litter, we fell in love with her. Little did we know that she was deaf!  After a couple of months with her, we were suspicious that she couldn't hear us.  Testing at Cornell University confirmed our suspicions.  She was deaf in both ears.  No matter how hard we tried to train her, it was literally impossible.  We found books on training deaf dogs which were informative but not that helpful.   That's when we decided to find ourselves a trainer.  Our vet gave us a listing of trainers in our area.  We called quite a few, leaving messages with all of them, explicitly explaining that we had a deaf dog that desperately needed training.  Not one of the eight had the courtesy of returning our phone call.....except Larry.  He was right up front and said that he never worked with a deaf dog before but certainly was willing.  He impressed us right off the bat because he had the decency to return our phone call and you could tell that he genuinely cared about Molly. He was willing to accept the challenge of training a deaf dog. 

 

On our first day of our lesson, he again was up front about not knowing how to train a deaf dog and gave us the option of backing out right up to the minute before our hour was up if we didn't feel that he could help her and would gladly refund our money.  We knew that we had no other choice.  We must give it a try.  We really needed help.

 

To our amazement, Molly is highly trainable.  With Larry's patience, kindness and guidance, he was able to bring the best out of Molly.  We didn't really think that she had the ability to learn because of her deafness.  We were so wrong!   The next eight weeks flew by.  Each week Molly was taught a few commands with sign language that we made up as we went along, and Molly caught on very quickly.  All we ever really wanted was to teach her the very basics.  She was a huge success.  Not only did Larry work with Molly, he also worked with us.  As new dog owners, we really didn't know how to approach training a dog, especially a deaf one.  With his advice each week, patience with Molly and with us, Molly has grown into a very happy puppy.  We didn't expect much going into the program when we started, but at the end, we were extremely pleased at the outcome.  Molly may have been born deaf, but she still is a normal  and loving puppy.  She will always have to be on a leash and will never have the freedom of running through a park without a leash, but we do know that she is trainable and still can still be a loving pet even if she is deaf.

 

In closing, Larry LeoGrande's program was the best gift we could've given Molly and to us.  We eagerly await our next step, group training!!!  We know Molly will love to be able to be around other dogs and we are excited about working with Larry again.  He is very knowledgeable and we highly recommend him without reservation. 

 

Dan, Diane and Molly Robertello