I have had a deaf dog in my home for about a week now. She is about 7 months old. I am trying to crate train her and she goes in without much of a fight, but then she cries and barks until she wears herself out. This can take anywhere from 10 minutes to two hours. The noise is awful- it's much worse than any other dog I have crate trained. Since I can't talk to her to calm her down or tell her "no," I am at a loss as to how to comfort her in the crate. She only makes eye contact when she feels like it. She is a very sweet dog but needs to be crate trained before she can be adopted because she is in the devil dog stage and can't be trusted unsupervised. . . .
I also wonder if anyone has advice on training deaf dogs with hand signals. She already knows "sit" but that's it so far. The main problem is getting her to look at me because she is a typical dane puppy- all over the place and easily distracted. I am considering getting her a vibrating collar to get her attention- does anyone have an opinion on those? I want to be sure they are not too unpleasant or stressful for the dog. I have heard great things about using them to get a deaf dog's attention. This is my first deaf foster so any advice would be welcome! (BTW, she is not a GDRNT dog- I used to foster for GDRNT when I lived in Dallas but I live in Austin now and foster for another rescue).