deafness

my rescued 12 month old bitch seems to be hard of hearing ,at first I thought she was just ignoring me has she did not know any commands when I got her . but I have notice if she is asleep and I go into the kitchen where she is caged she does not notice me -plus if running around the garden and I call her she does not notice but if my husband who has a deep voice calls her she immediately comes running , any help will be gratefully received

I don't have any personal experience of living with a deaf dog but the link below may be some help:

http://www.dfordog.co.uk/article-deaf-dog-hand-signals.html

This link also may be of interest  

http://staffy-bull-terrier.com/living_with_a_deaf_stafford

Well done you for noticing and working it out - if there's a genuine problem I'm pretty sure it's one that can be solved.
I've not encountered deafness in such a young dog only in older ones and hand signals can be a great way of communicating. For some reason many signals such as the "sit" one - work on hard of hearing dogs and dogs with perfect hearing.
We had a dog whistle for the old chap who had both poor hearing and poor eyesight (honestly - he would follow anyone if he'd lost track of us ......) and that helped too.

Good luck

Hang on a bit, the poster doesn't even know if the dog is deaf yet! 

Sorry, Audrey!  Just being pedantic.  Are you sure she's hard of hearing and not just ignoring you? Not being funny, but a lot of dogs will respond more to one person's tone of voice than to another's.

If you really are concerned, then your first port of call should be the vets, although you could try getting your oh to hold her and then drop something loud behind her to see if she hears it properly. The only problem with that is a lot of dogs will feel the vibration and respond.

A Baer test is probably the only sure way of telling how much hearing she has in each ear, but very few vets actually have the equipment needed. 

audrey wrote:my rescued 12 month old bitch seems to be hard of hearing ,at first I thought she was just ignoring me has she did not know any commands when I got her . but I have notice if she is asleep and I go into the kitchen where she is caged she does not notice me -plus if running around the garden and I call her she does not notice but if my husband who has a deep voice calls her she immediately comes running , any help will be gratefully received

Take her to the vets and make sure her ears aren't blocked up with wax and other matter. My Staffie has always had trouble with his ears getting blocked up and infected. A Steroid injection and some prescription ear drops sorts him out.