How to Calm Your Noise-Phobic Dog

06-12-2024 | General

I was visiting New York City recently and wondered if I was the only person around with sensitive ears? Subways, sirens, and traffic were quite difficult for me. I always had my fingers blocking my ears yet, nobody else seemed to even notice the loud noise. Apparently, most people had simply acclimated: loud noise is the price you pay in the city. Most had headphones or ear buds, which I am sure helped to cancel external sounds, but probably at a cost to their auditory health. Dogs hear twice as high as we humans. Cats, 3x as high. This means they are taking in frequencies that we can’t even hear. For pets in big cities, I can’t even imagine the soundscape they are trying to make sense of… and all just because we have located them with us in these terribly loud environments. Even inside, the insult to the nervous system can be great. A long time ago when I was living in Manhattan, our beautiful, large Japanese Akita heard a car backfire and ran across Broadway and was hit by a cab. She survived, but I’m sure there was lifetime damage. What can we do for our pets when they are assaulted by unnatural sounds that they cannot figure out? Rita the Akita was merely running to get home, to be safe in an environment she perceptually understood. We know that we (people and pets) are all wired a little differently. Some of us can handle louder sounds or brighter lights when others are uncomfortable or even pained. Basically, there are a few key approaches: 1. Masking Masking sound refers to the process of using a secondary sound to cover up unwanted sounds. Many hours of our carefully selected pet music will help your pet by covering up offending sounds like thunderstorms, fireworks, and city noise, which are often troubling due to their high amplitude and lack of a predictable pattern. 2. Distraction For a short term, distraction skirts the default mechanism of the brain which is trying to find a pattern. This is not the best long-lasting curative for noise-sensitive beings. 3. Conditioning Of these solutions, this is my favorite. (Even if you move to a quieter place, loud sounds seem to be a part of human culture.) Conditioning is a psychological term that refers to accustoming a person or animal to behave in a certain way. Our music was designed with this in mind. If your dog or cat comes to associate our calming playlists with the pet household being calm, this is conditioning. Some call it becoming accustomed to something; others, habituation. I think of conditioning pets as a perceptual and psychological training. You take an action, and your pet comes to understand and respond in kind. Our music is calm and gentle. If your pets see you get calm and gentle with the music, they will habituate to this feeling. Go for it! Find a nice quiet place for you and your dog. For some pets, simply playing specialized pet calming music will be a satisfactory remedy. For others, taking the time to retrain your pet to bring them back into non-terrorized behavior will have long-lasting results and be great for your entire pet household. Using our music as a tool during these training sessions can help create a positive and safe atmosphere for learning.

Community Comments

This article was so timely! We just moved to an apartment downtown, and my cat has been hiding every time a truck goes by. We started playing one of the soft piano playlists during the day, and she's finally starting to relax and explore her new space. Thanks for the great advice!

– Jessica L. The conditioning part is so true. We used to only play calming music for our dog during thunderstorms, but he started to associate the music itself with something scary. We switched it up and started playing it for 20 minutes every evening while we read on the couch. Now, during storms, the same music actually soothes him because he connects it to our quiet, happy routine.

– David R.