Band Together
Written by Pam on January 13, 2016
♥♥ Did you know that dogs love music! Well I never really believed it until my daughter started playing the piano. She would take her seat at the piano and play some beautiful music and our Ozzy would just lay by her side. Ozzy would always be in near distance to our daughter so I never really thought he was actually there for the music – that was until I started to pay close attention to Ozzy while my daughter jammed on the piano. As the notes escalated from a soft to a rise in tone, from that of pianissimo to piano to mezzo piano to mezzo forte, forte, fortissimo – Ozzy would pant than stop and close his mouth in order to hear the rise in tone then he would pant again. He would do this every time, the rise in tone happened. To me, this is enjoyment of the moment and it was his anticipation of the next tone. Of course being with his favorite human was his pure enjoyment but now enjoying the same thing that the favorite human is enjoying is to me a… unconditional way dogs and humans band together !
I was talking to one of our HGT families who own Drogheda and they too feel that music soothes a puppy. For instance, Drogheda loves the music of Diana Krall. After listening to Diana, I too enjoy her music. But to have a puppy learn that music is enjoyable, is remarkable. It is the repetition that the pup learns that through one behavior, that something good happens and that something is very welcomed. When Drogheda goes into his kennel willingly, the music starts to play from the Ipad on top of the kennel. So now he enjoys going into his kennel to listen to Diana. The soothing notes of her music probably helps him relax. Just like that of Pavlov’s dogs or through positive repetition, you can teach your HGT puppy amazing behaviors.
I needed to research this topic a little more and found an interesting article by Natalie Wolchover entitled: What Type Of Music Do Pets Like? Below are a few excerpts of that article that I found interesting…
Dogs are a tougher audience, mostly because breeds vary widely in size, vocal range and heart rate. However, large dogs such as Labradors or mastiffs have vocal ranges that are quite similar to those of adult male humans. “So, it is possible that they might be responsive to music in our frequency range. My prediction is that a big dog might be more responsive to human music than a smaller dog such as a Chihuahua.”
Indeed, some dogs do appear to respond emotionally to human music. Research led by Deborah Wells, a psychologist at Queen’s University Belfast, shows that dogs can discern between human music of different genres. “Our own research has shown that dogs certainly behave differently in response to different types of music, e.g., showing behaviors more suggestive of relaxation in response to classical music and behaviors more suggestive of agitation in response to heavy metal music.”
I will try and get a couple of videos of Ozzy and Drogheda enjoying our music – so check this blog again and hopefully the videos will post correctly :@) Enjoy, Pam