<body><div>PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (WOWK) — West Virginia doctors Michael and Carlee Squires spend their days helping people hear, but at home they have one patient who can’t hear a word.The two audiologists unknowingly adopted a deaf blue heeler puppy named Pips. Carlee says adopting Pips was a complete coincidence.“We already had one picked out, and then we went ahead and just took the other,” said Carlee. “One of our daughters kind of clung to the runt. She’s teeny tiny and cute, and was begging us to take a second dog. And so we did.”That day, nearly two years ago, Carlee and Michael took home a blue heeler they named Ruth, and the runt of the litter, Pips.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=2jpodJ_1FHeFd2Q00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=2jpodJ_1FHeFd2Q00" width="876" height="1197" ><figcaption>Pips, a blue heeler, and her big sister Ruth. (Photo Courtesy of Audiology Services of West Virginia)</figcaption></figure>It wasn’t until later that the doctors began to realize Pips might be different from her sister.“I remember going outside and calling for the dogs to come in,” said Michael. “Pip’s was asleep in the driveway, and [I was] whistling and clapping and yelling, and she didn’t flinch at all.”That’s when Carlee and Michael realized Pips might be deaf.“We are lucky being in the industry that we’re in to have some connections with other professionals who are skilled in assessing hearing loss in animals,” said Michael. “So, I started sending emails and making phone calls.”Michael and Carlee booked an appointment at their alma mater, the University of Akron. They took Pips there to see a specialist.“It didn’t quite go as we had wanted it to go, because she was a little bit older than what they typically test, but they were going to give a give it a whirl for us,” said Michael. “[The audiologist] said, ‘I don’t have any reservations in telling you that this dog at least has a severe hearing impairment, if not completely deaf.'”Once the doctors made that confirmation, they decided it was time they learned to properly communicate. They said they took Pips to a trainer who taught her to respond to a vibrating collar, hand signals, and other visual cues.“Essentially there’s a version of sign language that Pip uses instead of a verbal command,” said Michael. “So, where you might tell one dog to sit or stay or to come, we have hand signals for Pips to deliver the same information.”<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=30Z5IH_1FHeFd2Q00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=30Z5IH_1FHeFd2Q00" width="876" height="1168" ><figcaption>Dr. Carlee Squires and her blue heeler, Pips. (Photo Courtesy of Audiology Services of West Virginia)</figcaption></figure>Carlee and Michael said Pips also gets by with the help of her sister, Ruth.“Pips relies a lot on Ruth to know what’s going on, because if I go outside and whistle for Ruth, Ruth comes [and] Pips is right behind her,” said Michael.Carlee and Michael say that while they’ve helped Pips communicate with them, they’ve learned a lot from her as well.“It’s not that people don’t deserve communication; it’s just that sometimes you can’t approach every single person the exact same way,” said Michael. “There is a lot of animals out there that, that need help. There are a lot of people out there that might need some of those accommodations. And those accommodations [don’t] mean that something’s wrong, per se. It just means that we’ve got to approach it a little bit differently.”Carlee and Michael say that this experience has been a good lesson for their children as well. But they say Pips’ impact goes beyond just their family, but she’s helped them with work too.“Patients with hearing loss express a lot of frustration because of the people in their lives, don’t understand the difficulties that they go through, and so I think we have a little bit of increased empathy for that,” said Carlee. “We use those principles with Pips the same way we work with a human patient.”Carlee and Michael described adopting Pips as a blessing and a coincidence, but ultimately, they say it was something that was meant to be.“It’s very ironic,” said Carlee. “But I kind of thought, of course, why not us to have this.”</div></body>

Block Source: WBOY

Misinformation

Clickbait

Old or repetitive news

Explicit content

Location not relevant

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (WOWK) — West Virginia doctors Michael and Carlee Squires spend their days helping people hear, but at home they have one patient who can’t hear a word. The two audiologists unknowingly adopted a deaf blue heeler puppy named Pips. Carlee says adopting Pips was a complete coincidence.

West Virginia audiologists unknowingly adopt deaf puppy

Comments