Choose your dog’s music wisely.
What kind of music do dogs like best? What kind of music calms them down? What kind winds them up?
Dr. Becker has reported on several studies of dogs and music (https://www.barkandwhiskers.com/2023-11-03-music-calming-for-dogs/)
It’s classical music, hands-down: that’s the music for your dog. In one of the studies, 85% of the dogs tested found classical music to be the most calming. Solo piano pieces, solo harp selections, and soft rock also scored high.
At the other end of the scale, heavy metal music made the dogs antsy and provoked a lot of nervous barking. Bark if you’re surprised. Like we needed a scientific study to tell us heavy metal is lousy music.
Anyway, the tests were done at veterinary hospitals and animal shelters, on up to 50 dogs at a time, and the results were quite consistent. I don’t like that yelling-and-screaming pseudo-music any more than dogs do. But see what A Little Night Music by Mozart can do. Or maybe some Liberace, if you remember him.
[I seem to remember, quite a few years ago, reading about a study that showed plants (!) responding well to classical music. Does that ring a bell with anybody?]
What was “music” to my dog’s ears? “Want to go for a ride?” Or, “Want to go for a walk?” Or say Squirrel, with excitement in your voice. Yes sir, those words got him going!
Opera did well on the convicts in the yard in the movie “Shawshank Redemption.”
I don’t know if it’s true, but I read about one study, where one group of seedlings got to listen to classical music all day. And another group enjoyed hard rock for eight hours. The plants responded well to classical music. But the other seedlings, as you might expect, didn’t look “right.” It looked like they had led an unhealthy lifestyle, big-time. Yeah, smoking, drinking, drugs, and staying up late, and never coming home most nights.
Y’know, I’m sure I read about that plant experiment somewhere, years ago. Was it Reader’s Digest?
Reader’s Digest gets it stories from many places, so I have no idea. I also recall seeing pictures of the plants…from the same article, maybe.