Meet adoptable deaf two year old Echo who is looking for a loving home with someone who will cherish him, make daily positive reinforcement training/enrichment a priority and always keep him safe.
Echo is a deaf 2 year old neutered male. We have never done a DNA test on him, but have come to our own conclusion that he is a Husky Pit Bull mix. He is almost all white apart from black speckled floppy ears, black eyeliner, and black nose! He also has those Husky ice blue eyes and curly tail! He is roughly 50-60lbs, and stands at about 2 foot at his shoulder.
I do want to say that we were not in the best position to take this dog in, we just knew he needed to get out of the situation he was in, and we were temporarily going to be able to provide him with a better one until we could find something permanent.
Now onto his story, we rescued him from a not so great environment at the end of February this year. He had been kept outside with an igloo shelter and chained up. He had never been inside a house before us, and had zero social skills. We also have two female dogs that do not get along, despite our best efforts. While we worked with him to be more accustomed to us and updated his shots and worked towards getting him neutered in April. Once he was all healed up, we hired a trainer for him and our younger female to get them introduced and teach us how to work with a deaf dog.
The training helped, although not as much as we hoped, the last session we had with the trainer was in June. Echo can be protective and anxious which is a hard combination to work with. He especially protective when it comes to my mom, he has bonded with her. My mom was holding Echo’s leash, and the trainer went to grab the leash, said she moved too fast and pushed his boundaries, and he snapped at her. I know this seems contradictory, but Echo has never been aggressive towards anyone under the normal circumstances, this is the only time he has ever done that. Now he is very excitable, and can be a bit rough when he plays, which is why we do not rough house with him, unless there is a toy involved. Although the trainer said she takes full responsibility for the incident, she no longer felt comfortable working with him, and recommended we kept him kennel around our females.
Note from DDR: We have learned an e-collar was being used in training Echo which can cause a dog to be fear reactive so going forward we are hoping that the e-collar is discontinued and be replaced by daily positive reinforcement training and Nothing In Life is Free Training.
At this point, we pretty much knew that the best option for him would be to find him a home that is a single dog house hold, a fenced in yard, and have the time/resources to work with him more in depth. We do not know how he is with cats or children.
If you have read to this far and are still interested in him, just know he has so much potential to be a wonderful dog. He is so sweet and just wants to cuddle and play with his toys. He loves to be outside, expect for when its raining, he will actually refuse to go outside with the funniest attitude I’ve ever seen. He makes me smile and laugh every day. We would love to keep him, we simply don’t have enough to give him the life he deserves. It truly hurts having to give him up, but we know there is someone out there who can give him that! Please contact me if you are interested in giving this sweet boy his furever home!
Echo’s adoption fee is $275 to a screened and approved home only. You also must live within 2 hours of Dowagiac, MI to be considered for adoption.
If you are interested in adopting Echo, please email Kaylen at: kaylenquail21@gmail.com