So we are highly considering adopting 1.5 year old blind/special needs Boston pup. He is the sweetest little guy but clearly has other neurological diversities other than blindness. (small head, circling behaviors, etc) He currently knows 2 commands “stop” and his name and has one known bad habit of chewing on things.

We are well versed in the realm of owning dogs with special needs. We have an older girl who is almost completely deaf and has severe anxiety issues we’ve mostly worked through. And we had a dog with IVDD. We have ample experience training dogs, and even training our deaf girl based on visual cues.

We don’t expect this pupper to learn all the things we taught our older girl (though we can try if he seems happy and receptive to it) but we’re thinking the “leave it” command might be really critical since he is a chewer and we have a child who leaves things places. How do you train a blind dog leave it? I’m guessing it would be the way you normally would since it is a auditory command mostly? Anyone who has experience training a blind dog I would love any recommendations or tips. Training a deaf dog was easy because of visuals. But training a blind dog takes only auditory and I don’t want to startle him if I need to readjust him physically to teach him the command. (ie, me blocking the “leave it” item and him running into me because he doesn’t know i’m there.)

Also don’t worry we don’t plan on starting training until after the decompression phase if the trial period goes well of course.