A family has taught their deaf dog - sign language.<br /><br />Peewee, a Bull Terrier, can understand a raft of commands - and is still learning.<br /><br />Owner Nikki Engleman, 36, adopted the ten-year-old from foster care, where he had picked up a few words.<br /><br />But she has spent the last decade teaching him, using books, social media and YouTube.<br /><br />Peewee now responds to individual words and is starting to pick up longer phrases.<br /><br />Nikki, from Anoka, Minnesota, said: “He came to us already knowing two or three signs at that point.<br /><br />"But we decided we wanted to take it up a notch. I just wanted to be able to communicate more with him.<br /><br />"If he’s sleeping and it’s time to go to bed we’ll go up and well tap him and he knows it means to go to sleep.<br /><br />"We'll sign potty and he’ll go to do a wee.<br /><br />"I’ll also sign eat when he’s outside and hell go eat, we have also recently taught him bedtime.<br /><br />"If he’s sleeping on the couch I’ll go up and tap him and he'll go off to bed."<br /><br />Nikki, a nurse and her husband Drew, who runs a glass business, both had to learn sign language from scratch.<br /><br />She said: “We knew a couple of folks in the deaf community, but I personally didn’t know any sign language.<br /><br />“We purchased books about how you can sign with your baby, and we learnt the basic signs that way.<br /><br />“We also turned to YouTube and social media."<br /><br />Having already learnt the basics from his first foster home, Peewee proved to be very gifted at picking up sign language.<br /><br />Nikki, a mum-of-two, described how the dog was very attentive and would often focus on a person’s hands if they were talking to him. <br /><br />She said: “I knew right away that training him would be super easy”.<br /><br />Since raising Peewee, Nikki and her family decided they would challenge themselves even further by taking in another puppy, Faith, who is also deaf.<br /><br />Faith took a bit more time to get to grips with it, but now both dogs are thriving and continuing to learn more sign language every day.<br /><br />Nikki has begun expanding the phrases she uses from a single word to two or three words to form more advanced instructions. <br /><br />She described how teaching the dogs longer phrases has helped them to be less dependent on her.<br /><br />She said: “If I was to ask one of my girls to take the dogs out to the bathroom, the dogs would look to me to find out what’s going on.<br /><br />“I will sign ‘potty’ and ‘sister’ to tell them to follow their sister out to the bathroom.”<br /><br />Nikki decided to start documenting her dogs and their learning on TikTok, and has been blown away by the response.<br /><br />She said: “I’ve had quite a few people message me saying that they have adopted a deaf dog and have asked me for pointers and where to begin with training."
