The dog's hearing sense is, in some ways, far more powerful than our own.
A dog’s auditory system is amazingly effective. Dogs have the ability to detect ranges we can’t and to pick up sound from different directions. Knowing a bit more about how your dog’s hearing functions will help you better understand how he perceives and lives in the world.
The sound environment you live in has a significant impact on your mental health and wellness. Humans naturally habituate to sounds in their environment unless these sounds become intrusive in which case we have a hard time ignoring them. A tap that drips at night or a dog that never stops barking is not just annoying, it can become overwhelming if it doesn't stop.
Think about how loud everything is around you. Most of us live in busy sonic environments and rarely experience absolute silence. In fact as the planet becomes busier, it's harder to find anywhere that is completely quiet. Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA is one of those places, and at certain times of the year, is one of the quietest places on earth. For approximately six months, Yellowstone is blanketed with a thick layer of snow, absorbing all sound, and you can experience absolute silence. It is only when you visit places like Yellowstone that you realize how noisy the world you live in really is. Traffic, phones, microwaves, sirens, barking dogs, airplanes etc. form an auditory backdrop that most humans naturally habituate to, and unless a sound is truly invasive or sudden, we forget it's there. The skill we have to naturally filter out sounds around us helps us adapt more easily to different environments, but this ability means we sometimes forget how overwhelming certain environments can be for our dogs. Most dogs, like humans, also habituate to the sounds around them, but others find it very difficult and develop noise anxieties or phobias as a result.
The importance of sound sense
Our sound sense is one of the last senses we pay attention to when it comes to understanding how much it contributes to our emotional experience. Certain sounds do indeed trigger memories of the past. Think of a sound that takes you back to your childhood or when you went on a favorite vacation.
But sound does much more than trigger past memories. Our hearing is fine tuned to alert us to potential dangers in the present. We don't live in caves anymore, but our prehistoric ears still become acute when we need them to be, for example, when we are alone at night. We often hear noises at night that we don't even know are there during the day, but if we are alone those noises take on a whole new meaning.
Sound and the nervous system
The human ear is a marvel and while our hearing sense is extraordinary, our dogs’ hearing is even more more acute. We tend to put more thought into how dogs smell things when we work with them but their sound experience has a profound impact on their nervous system and therefore their behavior. When you understand the relationship between sound and behavior it is easier to create auditory environments that have a positive impact on your dog's overall life experience.
Psychoacoustics is the ‘study of the perception of sound,’ particularly on the human nervous system, and this study reveals that auditory input has a much larger impact on the mental and physical health of humans than we might think. The sound of a busy city might be too overwhelming for people who live in the countryside. Conversely standing in the snow in the dead of that Yellowstone winter might be too quiet for those of us who are used to an auditory-rich environment.
Bioacoustics is the study of sound in non-human animals, and is a branch of science that deals with the relation between living beings and sound. Research has shown that the effects of sound are shared by people and animals and therefore the energy of sound should not be taken for granted.
In his book ‘Through A Dog’s Ear, Using Sound to Improve the Health and Behavior of Your Canine,’ Joshua Leeds, a leading pschoacoustician and founder of iCalmPet writes that "over stimulation of auditory senses can have as significant an effect on our animals as it does on humans." Dogs are incredibly adaptable, but this ability to adapt along with their sensitive hearing has also done them a disservice. Some dog lovers take their dogs’ flexibility for granted, and what might be a stimulating environment for them can be a challenging environment for their dog. Understanding our dogs’ perception and experience of sound will help us pay more attention to their needs and provide them with sensory spaces that support their "behavioural balance and health."
Sounding the alarm!
The dog’s hearing sense has served us for thousands of years because they were and still are effective alarm systems. Their particular aptitude to sounding that alarm might annoy us at times, but we only have ourselves to blame. Humans have encouraged dogs’ barking ability by selectively breeding those who barked loudly to help with hunting and protection. But this ability also comes with an acute awareness of the environment around them, which can become an irritant when our dogs consistently warn us that something or someone is coming.
What dogs can hear
So how do our dogs hear and how different is it from ours?
- Puppies are actually born deaf, but their ears open at two weeks of age, and by one month their hearing is exceptional.
- The human ear can detect pitches up to 20,000 Hertz, whereas dogs can hear frequencies up to 45,000-67,000 Hertz.
- Dogs’ ears are mobile and move around like satellite dishes, picking up sound from all around them.
- Household appliances that mean little to us in terms of sound can really hurt a dog’s sensitive ears. Vacuum cleaners, roaring garbage trucks, or the cries of a baby can cause misery for many dogs.
- Although most dogs are able to filter out offensive sounds and not become overwhelmed, other dogs struggle with this and suffer from noise sensitivity disorders, developing fears and phobias to noises such as fireworks, thunder, and sirens.
Music and the dog's ear
Studies have shown that music and ‘simple sound’ discharges the dog’s nervous system. The use of music to calm our dogs is not simply about playing classical music to them, but rather how and when ‘simple’ music is played. There are many ways to use sound to help dogs overcome certain anxieties and phobias, as well as using specially designed psychoacoustic music to help dogs with separation issues and aggressive behavior. Studies have shown that dogs are so sensitive to changes in tone that they can detect even the smallest changes in pitch between two notes. With this in mind, Victoria discovered that there was another way to help dogs get over certain sound sensitivities and anxieties, by using music as part of a sensory education program. Working with the creators of iCalmPet, whose specially designed bioacoustic music helps to calm dogs in all environments ranging from the home to the shelter, Victoria developed the Canine Noise Phobia Series, which pairs bioacoustic music and sound effects with a behavioral protocol designed to help a dog overcome sensitivities to certain sounds as well as to help dogs that suffer with certain anxieties.
