It's very upsetting for you, and Gemma is probably ok with it all. Bertie went deaf at some point and we only noticed when Max died, as he lost his hearing dog. I noticed then that he started to pick up non-verbal cues from us, and if we approached him when he was snoozing, we stomped our feet, so he felt us approach, and got less of a fright. Aside from that, he was absolutely fine. We changed our ways a bit and were more worried about it than he was.