Family teaches their deaf dog - sign language

A family has taught their deaf dog - sign language.

Peewee, a Bull Terrier, can understand a raft of commands - and is still learning.

Owner Nikki Engleman, 36, adopted the ten-year-old from foster care, where he had picked up a few words.

But she has spent the last decade teaching him, using books, social media and YouTube.

Peewee now responds to individual words and is starting to pick up longer phrases.

Nikki, from Anoka, Minnesota, said: “He came to us already knowing two or three signs at that point.

"But we decided we wanted to take it up a notch. I just wanted to be able to communicate more with him.

"If he’s sleeping and it’s time to go to bed we’ll go up and well tap him and he knows it means to go to sleep.

"We'll sign potty and he’ll go to do a wee.

"I’ll also sign eat when he’s outside and hell go eat, we have also recently taught him bedtime.

"If he’s sleeping on the couch I’ll go up and tap him and he'll go off to bed."

Nikki, a nurse and her husband Drew, who runs a glass business, both had to learn sign language from scratch.

She said: “We knew a couple of folks in the deaf community, but I personally didn’t know any sign language.

“We purchased books about how you can sign with your baby, and we learnt the basic signs that way.

“We also turned to YouTube and social media."

Having already learnt the basics from his first foster home, Peewee proved to be very gifted at picking up sign language.

Nikki, a mum-of-two, described how the dog was very attentive and would often focus on a person’s hands if they were talking to him.

She said: “I knew right away that training him would be super easy”.

Since raising Peewee, Nikki and her family decided they would challenge themselves even further by taking in another puppy, Faith, who is also deaf.

Faith took a bit more time to get to grips with it, but now both dogs are thriving and continuing to learn more sign language every day.

Nikki has begun expanding the phrases she uses from a single word to two or three words to form more advanced instructions.

She described how teaching the dogs longer phrases has helped them to be less dependent on her.

She said: “If I was to ask one of my girls to take the dogs out to the bathroom, the dogs would look to me to find out what’s going on.

“I will sign ‘potty’ and ‘sister’ to tell them to follow their sister out to the bathroom.”

Nikki decided to start documenting her dogs and their learning on TikTok, and has been blown away by the response.

She said: “I’ve had quite a few people message me saying that they have adopted a deaf dog and have asked me for pointers and where to begin with training."