Deaf since birth · Shoot the Dog, Volume Four, page 78
Hope, the deaf Boston Terrier who hears with her heart
Hope's page in Shoot the Dog, Volume Four ends with the best last line in the book:
Hope may not be able to hear with her ears but certainly hears with her heart.
Hope is a Boston Terrier who "has been deaf since birth, yet knows no boundaries to what she can achieve". Her family describe a "very intelligent, affectionate, and playful girl" with "plenty of wit and personality, always making people laugh".
Everyone must stop and say hello
Hope has firm views on how people should behave around her. Any human nearby is expected to stop and acknowledge her, and then she smothers them "in sloppy kisses". That leads to her one great puzzle:
You can see her confusion when the person on the other side of the road doesn't stop to say hello.
Easy to find
You might think a deaf dog would be hard to keep track of. Not this one. Her family explain:
Finding her proves to be a breeze, her constant squeaks, snorts, snuffling, snoring, and often her gassiness soon give her away!
Anyone who has lived with a flat-faced breed will know every one of those sounds.
Look at those eyes
The portrait above was made on black, with nothing to look at but her: the tall ears, the brown patches, and those pale blue eyes fixed straight down the lens. She is not the only deaf dog in Volume Four, either. Matilda, a Jack Russell cross Blue Heeler adopted from the RSPCA, is on page 20. "She is deaf," her family write, "but that doesn't slow her down or stop her living life to the fullest."
Rescue at the heart of it
Every family photographed for Shoot the Dog paid a $100 participation fee, and all of it went directly to an animal rescue group. Where the $100 went tells that story, and names the five rescues.