Meet Karlie and Rhett, an incredible duo who were both born without hearing. Growing up, Karlie has always wanted to adopt a deaf dog, so when she heard from a coworker about a dog at a shelter in south Texas she went and rescued him.
She taught Rhett hand signs and he caught on very fast. He now understands 30 signs. She’s taught him unusual games too, such as how to go on Easter egg hunts. She signs “egg” and then hides it, so when she signs egg, he finds it. It’s now his favorite game. Karlie says it’s not really hard to train deaf dogs, you don’t even need to know sign language, you just have to be consistent in the signal you use.
Adopting Rhett has given Karlie a lot of self esteem and courage. She now champions deaf dogs whenever she can, encouraging others to give them a chance. Karlie has written a book about Rhett: I Deaf-finitely Can, Rhett the Heeler to show the world that deaf dogs are able. She says there are a lot of deaf dogs at shelters who deserve a chance.
When Donna with Stray Rescue of St. Louis approached Roddie, the dog was limping and didn’t want her to get close. Temperatures outside had soared to triple digit heat. For the animal rescue, when the heat goes up, they get extremely busy. Not only do they have to rescue dogs affected by the extreme heat…
A newly adopted dog surprised his human when he did something to help her that she wan’t expecting. Cassie Peña and her husband adopted an Akita/Husky mix from their local shelter in August and named him Dexter. A month later, Cassie had a medical procedure done and she needed help to get up in the…
Nineteen dogs starving in the woods will spend their first night in foster homes. But their rescue left the people that saved them shaken. “Where do I even begin? Over the years, Stray Rescue [of St. Louis] has been asked to help with some of the worst cases imaginable, but this one shook us all,”…
About 200 dogs at a dog shelter based in southern Greece got specially pampered in preparation to find them homes. “The DASH (Dream of A Safe Heaven) dog shelter is based in Kalamata, southern Greece. It was built by volunteers, it is being run by volunteers and it is based on donations alone, like all…
There was a whole lot of excitement when Colonel, the honorary groomsman and ring bearer showed up at the wedding of his humans. The Labrador Retriever was so excited for his parent’s big day that he sprinted down the aisle, knocked down the microphone and nearly jumped up on the bride. You might say their…
Buddy was picked up on the highway and brought to a shelter in a town in Germany. Jennifer’s mom works at the shelter and she shared a video of Buddy playing with a toy. He was probably going to have issues being adopted because he was deaf. Jennifer wasn’t planning on adopting another dog, especially…
