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Sugar lives in a silent world.

Screeching cars, chirping birds, gushing wind and the voice of her master can’t be heard.

Her affliction was inherited from her father, a deaf boxer.

Jordan Miller, a 23-year-old dog trainer and UNCG student, is trying to bring Sugar and her owner, Jesse Macon, closer together. Sugar, only 9 months old, is being taught hand signs and how to respond to a vibrating collar.

Sugar is a blond with bright eyes and has a sweetness about her that’s easily recognized as she wags her tail, playfully rolls on the ground and responds vigorously to petting.

She’s never met a stranger, says Jesse Macon of Greensboro, Sugar’s owner.

“All dogs yearn for structure in their lives; they want to know where in the family they belong,” Miller said.

Sugar won Macon’s heart, and he sought training for her so that her life would be more enjoyable. He was given the dog, a boxer-pit bull mix, from a neighbor whose dog had a litter of puppies.

It didn’t matter to Macon that Sugar was deaf. He sought help from Miller, who is a trainer at PETCO at 4217 W. Wendover Ave. “He showed up one day and I was real busy and I didn’t get to talk with him,” Miller said. “He filled out a paper telling about Sugar. I’ve never trained a deaf dog but I called him and told him to bring her in and we’d try,” Miller said.

“He brought her in on a Sunday afternoon. It was love at first sight. I went down to her level and started petting her,” Miller said.

Miller decided that Sugar could be trained by using a vibrating collar to get her to recognize commands. Only her master gives those commands. Miller instructs Macon on operating the collar and how to react when Sugar responds correctly to the collar’s vibrations.

The first command she learned was to “look up” at her master — and to get a treat from Macon for her response.

“The collar has a single vibration mode that serves as a classical conditioning method,” Miller said. “What we do is vibrate the collar and reward Sugar for immediately looking up to us. Since she is deaf, we’re simply using the collar to get her attention and ingrain in her mind that the vibration means she needs to focus on and look to her owner for a command.

“When Sugar reacts to the vibration and looks at us, we replace the normal verbal commands with hand signals — hand up for sit, hand down for down and so forth. We also are still working on the classical conditioning of her reacting to the vibration but that can only be perfected with time. However, as Sugar continues to improve, we can move on to more difficult commands,” Miller said.

Slowly, Macon and Sugar are growing closer through the training provided by Miller, who started training dogs and horses when she was only a child growing up on her family’s ranch in Boulder, Colo. Her father, Robert Miller, is an attorney as well as a cowboy who trains sheep dogs and horses.

The training will take a long time because 20 minutes per week is all that can be spent on the training, Miller said. “It’s a slow process but she has been responding very well,” she said.

“I feel very blessed that I’m able to do this,” said Miller, who said she became a paid trainer to make money while in college. She started her secondary education at Guilford College where she played soccer.

She spent a year at Haifa University in Israel where she studied psychology, Hebrew, the history of Israel and other subjects. She also played soccer and basketball at the university.

“I’m flattered with the positive attention and that people love what we are doing, but I can’t say that I’m giving Sugar a second chance in life,” Miller said.

“Her family is amazing, always loving and taking incredible care of her. I’m merely enabling Sugar to communicate with her family so they can bond and understand each other like in an ideal relationship.

“Dogs crave structure and order and love to please. By Sugar learning to obey commands, she’s fulfilling those desires that are instinctive to her,” Miller said.

Even when Miller gets her college degree, dogs will continue to play a big part in her life. “I want to start a rescue/training/grooming kennel with the purpose of debunking myths and stigmas about shelter and mixed-breed dogs and helping them find loving families,” she said. She sees that kennel as a “dog sanctuary where I rescue dogs from shelters and those in danger of being euthanized and I train them and then adopt them out to loving, responsible families,” Miller said.

“My golden retriever mix is a shelter dog, and that is one of my biggest motivations. I rescued her and she changed my life. I would like to help families find the same joy from the many amazing dogs that are abandoned in shelters,” Miller said.

She also wants to train dogs to be used in therapy for military veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

It’s likely to be a family venture. “My family and I are looking for land for this project,” she said. Her sister, Anna, a junior at Guilford College, plans to go to veterinary school. “My sister will join me by saving horses from slaughter and training them for therapy purposes as well. She has a passion for horses like I have for dogs,” Miller said.

“In our house my father always considered the dogs and horses as part of the family.”

Contact Bob Burchette at bburchette@triad.rr.com