NancyPinkCook,
I'm hoh, dog trainer and shelter behavior and trainer volunteer, congrats on your new family member! I've worked with deaf dogs. What beautiful pictures! She appears focused and making some eye contact with you- start with that and USE that- reward her for every little moment that she makes eye contact with you. Doesn't matter how long, or where you and she are. Hearing or deaf, doesn't matter - rewarding eye contact is a basic behavior to teach a dog <assuming the dog sees>
When you mentioned "....understanding of language and sign.." - what did you mean by "language"? Dogs have no understanding of any human verbal language <unless and until it is actually taught by association> but have a rich language of their own that is highly visual and often very subtle.
In your girl's case, it's possible that she may not know her own specie's language because she has been deprived of physical, social communication based on her cage history and I also don't know at what age she was taken from the litter, which also makes a difference.
Visual cues are a natural way for a dog to understand and learn. Voice cues are a human expectation that is often not realistic and poorly trained.
The biggest thing in my experience with any dog suffering from anxiety or trauma is to build confidence, which helps to build learning.
In terms of behavioral things at home - hand-feed her. Use her meals as training times.
Take your hand and bring a piece of food up toward your eye as a visual cue to have her look toward or in your face. The INSTANT you get that, or even an attempt at that - MARK it with a visual reference such as THUMBS-UP and reward her. You can use her whole meal for this or set aside half her meal, twice a day, for this.
Take your hands and put food in one and show them to her. Have her look for the hand with the food in it. Morph that into - putting food on the ground near you and have her look for it.
There are lots of food-hiding, actual games for dogs that are made of washable plastic and have moving parts and compartments the dog needs to figure out how to manipulate to get at the treats inside. Invest in one and play with her with that; feed her her meals in that. She gets self-rewarded by something she figured out - and dogs who have a sense of control over their environment feel less anxious - and gets to use her nose and eyes - natural ability and simulates the prey drive of a pet carnivore<which is the dog> and teaches her confidence in investigating new things and succeeding.
There are also lots of calming scents <not room sprays or deodorizers, but holistic, and/or essential oil-based, companion animal products> that can be diffused into the room as well. Look up Dog Appeasing Pheremones as an example.
Reward anything "brave". Make a big party - not just "ho-hum", head pat<head-patting is also very rude>, smile- but BIG happy face, makes your eyes happy, make your body language happy, play bow with her, make yourself "curv-y" and askance in posture as opposed to straight body, foward-facing...make yourself inviting, shower her with treats. Treats should be yummy...stinky, small, meaty. Not kibble or biscuits. Forward-facing, frontal <think hand-shake> postures are NOT inviting for most dogs and can be considered threatening or just not very appealing at best. This is what primates <humans, chimps, gorillas> do. Not the way dogs interact.
Teach her "tricks" - they are actually great learning opportunities and we do this in the shelter. Teach her to touch her paw or nose to your hand by rubbing your hand with a smelly treat <natural turkey hot dogs, for example> putting your hand right in front of her face. When she goes to smell the hand, give her the visual THUMBS UP with the other hand and give her the treat. As she gets more confidence and starts to connect your hand, the treat and the action and is quick to touch your hand, you can start adding movement - one step, she moves forward. Or direction- your other hand or the other side of your body. This can later translate to her closing a door for you <gives her something to do, confidence> or can be a way of getting her to come into you without calling - a hand signal.
Take empty, clean cardboard boxes and hide treats in them, with the boxes facing up, flaps off. Maybe just one box. If she's afraid of the box, throw stinky treats all around and over it and save one especially meaty or stinky treat for being "extra-brave" - maybe sticking her nose in the box, or climbing in the box.
Teach her to roll over; to turn her head one side, than the other; to "Sit pretty"; to back up.
In the house, take a handful of treats and give her one, than run the other way and when she gets to you, treat her. Dogs love movement, and novelty and the directional changes of the game make it interesting. Maybe only run a few steps to make it easy for her and encourage her..or if running isn't for you, sit in a chair and throw a piece of treat, then get up and encourage her to come back to you by luring her with another treat. After she's gotten the treat for coming back to you, sit back down and throw another one. This teaches handler focus and re-direction onto handler, and ideally, eye contact.
All kinds of things you can do - the biggest thing is - consistency, make it VISUAL and reward as much as possible. Every. Little. Thing. Do things that can help her be confident and reward small things - she checked out the toaster- awesome - treat her. Remember to reward eye contact, that's a basic behavior.
If you're worried about the amount of food reduce meal intake to accommodate training.
Good Luck! She is beautiful!
Lola
