The stray whippet that i am currently looking after has no obedience skills whatsoever. Sit, stay, give paw. She doesn't know anything at all. I may as well be talking in Russian.
Because she is still recovering and tires easily i haven't started any basic skills with her yet. How do i train her without frightening her? She's full of lumps, bumps and old scars that i'm sure each one tells a horrible tale, i just don't want her to think i am an ogre who will hurt her. At the same time she must realise she must wait her turn in the queue when i'm handing out the treats.
Ideas anyone?

> I may as well be talking in Russian

Is her hearing OK?

ETA, it can be hard to see that a dog is deaf, as they are brill at using thier other senses. They can tell when somebody is at the door, either by other dogs/peoples reactions of when somebody has entered by smelling the air that comes in. Things being dropped on the floor can be felt as vibrations through the floor (equally for a person/animal walking into a room). When the fridge has been opened a deaf dog may still come and see what you are doing - they can smell it. People/things outside can cause shodows/reflections/light effects that can be seen. so can be reacted to as if the dog could hear them. Fireworks can still cause a dog to react - if they can see the firework (and have allready made the association between the look of one and the sound of one while they could hear).
They can also follow most commands - if they see the facial expressions/body language that has always accompanied them, however, with a dog that does not know you, they would not know what the usual expressions/body language for commands are.

Our last dog must have been deaf for well over a year before we realised, we thought he'd just been getting stubborn! Cutting a long story short, we found communicating through body language/facial expressions, sooooo much better than vocaly, so when we got Buster as a pup, all commands were taught with a vocal & a signal.

I would treat her in exactly the same way that you treat/train all your other dogs :) If you are confident in what you are doing, she will pick up on that and should find it reassuring rather than intimidating. Start as you mean to go on. If you are to soft (because she has had a rough time) or allow her to do things your other dogs would not get away with, you will make a rod for your own back and confuse the life out of her.

Her previous owner might not have spoken English, remember. ;-)

Treat her as you would a baby puppy; 'name' the action and reward when she does it naturally and she'll learn what you want.

Is her hearing OK?

Her hearing is fine. She hears the clanging of the metal bowls (dinner time) and when i try and creep out of the room she immediately wakes up and follows me in the hope i'm heading towards the kitchen.

I also use verbal and hand signals for sit & stay etc with my own dogs as my BC is going deaf but she is as bright as button and knows the routine anyway.

My last rescue a JRT was much more skittish but soon picked things up, however she wasn't as poorly as this whippet.

I think i will feel more comfortable with training her once i know what the huge lump is on her neck. I'm scared i'm going to become too attached to her in case the lump is terminal. She has an appointment Thursday morning to withdraw cells via a syringe and then its the waiting game for the results!
Too late i am attached and filling up just thinking about the worst case scenario! 

Give her time.  If she's still poorly and everything is new for her she needs to settle in - depending on her history some dogs also find the focus of training on them quite stressful; I couldn't do proper training with Raine (i.e. me and her and a clicker type stuff) for almost a year because the pressure of that situation, with the focus on her only, was just too much.  Now she's fine with it, but I'm going through a similar thing with Phoebe and I found the same with Logan for different reasons but in each case, they just needed time to learn that I wasn't a threat, and that training is fun but it had to be taken very slowly.

As for pushing in the treat queue that's easy the ones that push don't get until they don't push, everyone else gets theirs, amazing how quick they twig they will be ignored if they aren't polite.