 | With as many as 90% of today’s dog owners talking about a behavioral issue when visiting the vet, even our very adaptable friends are having a hard time adjusting to modern times. The answering machine, the car alarm, the leaf blower—compelling evidence suggests that sensory overwhelm affects our four-legged best friends at least as much as it does their owners. After all, their ears are far more sensitive than our own. |
| So, just how do they hear the human world? Joshua Leeds, a psychoacoustic expert, has spent the last two decades studying the psychological and physiological effects of sound and music on the human nervous system. Approached by award winning concert pianist and dog-lover Lisa Spector to create “intentional” music for dogs in the hopes of modifying Fido’s dysfunctional, anxiety-caused behavior, Leeds was intrigued. “I couldn’t help but wonder,” says Leeds, “if music could change a dog’s heart rate and brainwaves, and reduce levels of stress just as it so easily does with people. I wanted to see if the psychoacoustic techniques that I’d honed so effectively with humans could also be effective with dogs.” With the help of veterinary neurologist Dr. Wagner, Leeds and Juilliard-trained Spector set out to design and test soundtracks to produce profound calming, reduce anxiety, and help overcome behavioral issues in canine listeners. Calming, however, required more than simply spinning standard classical fare, the musical genre that’s easily recognizable patterns have been shown to do the best job. Changing doggy brainwaves, they discovered, called for more than conventional Bach or Beethoven. Using psychoacoustic principles of tone, rhythm and pattern identification, Leeds and Spector handpicked, modified, and rearranged traditional classical pieces to create canine music of simplified sound. “When I witnessed the results of the calming music on my own canine patients and those of my colleagues, I knew this was breakthrough work in music therapy for dogs,” says Dr. Wagner, who will present the results of clinical research on 150 dogs on February 22, 2008 at the Midwest Veterinary Conference in Columbus, Ohio. Next Event: Music Therapy for You and Your Canine Companion Date: April 11-13, 2008 Location: East West Bookstore 324 Castro Street Mountain View, CA 94041 (650) 988-9800 |
| SOURCE: Through a Dog’s Ear Press Release |
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