abuse reactive behavior

Hey everyone! I have a 13 year old male american eskimo, Wolfy, who went almost deaf about a year ago. He can hear whistles and claps, but not much else. Since he went deaf, he has developed some wierd behavior. He's already wierd, even for an eskie (eats everything in sight, fond of bananas and live bats as snacks), but this makes me worry a lot.

Whenever I reach out to pet him, he dodges my hands and dances a couple feet away, a lot like abuse reactive behavior. He isn't frantic to get away from me or anyone, but if anyone deliberatly reaches out to his head, he does this dodging thing.

Now we have never ever abused Wolfy, never struck him in any way. The only time he has ever been hit is by an old woman who we used to rent out our basement to. But she was out of our house within a week of us finding out she had kicked Wolfy, and we never spoke to her again.

So my question is, what does this behavior mean? We can still pet him and hold him, but most of the time he does this dodgy thing. We're going to get him checked out by a vet soon for a regular checkup, to see if he does this because something hurts him, but it really doesn't seem like pain-induced bahavior, like his head hurts if we touch him. He really is acting like someone hits him! :(

It could be a sort of defensive mechanisum because of his not
being able to hear your voice clearly. I'd just call him to you for
pets instead of reaching out towards his head. Then again, many
dogs don't ever like having someone reach over them to touch their heads. Try letting him see your hands by coming up to him
from underneath or byside his head.

I agree with lizbud.
Maybe he is sarting to loose his sight as well?

Is this a behavior that just sarted or has he been doing it for 13 years?

depending on how much money you want to invest you can also get vibrating collars for deaf dogs. Many people use them just to alert their dogs to look at them, because something is going to happen - being pet, getting a leash put on etc. deafdogs.org has lots of good tips on working with dogs who are deaf or loosing their hearing.

Our Pepper is completely deaf and if we touch her sometimes it scares her because she didn't know we were their. Perhaps your boy is going blind and just needs to know that it is you and he can trust you. I think you should work out a signal the you want him to come over by you. I think you probably already motion him over to you somehow. This will give him warning that you want him to come over and get pet. There is an old shepherd down the street from us who is going blind and when we get within range of her house she growls and I stop and let her come up to us so she knows who it is thats coming toward her. I hope the only problem is that he needs to know who is petting him and not that he is in any pain.

I agree with Irescue452.
I had a poodle that was deaf and a little blind. When we touched her she'd jump because she didn't know we were there. We used to clap a little before getting close to her so she knew we were there and ready to pet her.