If you have:
- a dog who reacts to noises while at home;
- a smartphone or tablet that can send a signal to wireless speakers; and
- wireless speakers
…you can try sound masking to protect your dog from some sounds that might bother him.**
What I’m going to describe is called sound masking, and it is the auditory counterpart to putting up window film. Because I already had a smartphone and wireless speakers, my solution cost only $1.99 for the app.
The idea is to buy a sound generating app that includes white noise, beach or ocean waves, or another wide spectrum noise (random-ish noise with lots of frequencies), and looping capabilities. That is, it will play this noise over and over seamlessly until you tell it to stop.
If you play the noise through your speakers, you can mask at least some of the outdoor noises that might cause your dog to react. My dog reacts to some engine noises, car doors closing, joggers going by, and people talking or shouting. Putting on the noise generator can mask a lot of that. Not all, but a lot.
This is a management technique, in that you are not seeking to train the dog or change their emotional response. You are just controlling the environment to limit their exposure to things that scare them. This is counterintuitive, but sound masking is actually more effective than trying to build a barrier against the sound, especially at low frequencies. It’s also likely more effective than the sound cancelling headphones for dogs being marketed.
Working on sound phobias with desensitization and counterconditioning can help your dog actually recover from the fear, but in the meantime, masking can be a big help.
Also, you may want to review my posts on dogs’ hearing capabilities compared to humans’ , why impulse sounds like clickers can be scary, and what to do if your dog is afraid of the clicker.
Why Not Music?
But wait, you say. Isn’t there special music you can buy to relax your dog? Yes there is, and lots of it. I don’t use it for three reasons.
- Despite some studies, the evidence is thin that music of a certain type intrinsically soothes dogs. Much thinner than the abundance of products would suggest. The background research of what dogs can perceive and discriminate in music is missing. A recent study had the result that dogs were calmer when listening to a male voice reading an audiobook than to specially composed dog relaxation music. The music studies have been out long enough that there are now some review studies about them, and the experts have found many problems with the studies.
- My goal is not to play something for them to listen to and relax to. It is to lessen the intensity or even cover up extraneous sound. A much simpler and more direct goal. To that end, I’ve even been known to play very loud rock music during thunderstorms. Not anybody’s idea of relaxing, but it’s not scary to the dogs like a thunderstorm, and it has low (bass) frequencies that can compete with the rumble of thunder. But I figured there might be a better way.
- When I tried the special music, it didn’t work.
The App
I bought “White Noise” by TMSOFT. There are many noise apps for smartphones; this is the one I picked and I like it a lot. I wasn’t solicited in any way, nor do I get anything for mentioning the product. It is marketed as a sleep aid and has all sorts of capabilities. I am just touching the tip of the iceberg with my usage here. It has 40 different noises, some of which definitely wouldn’t be soothing to most people, but are interesting. Dripping faucet, anyone? Ride in a jet?
Choosing a Sound
Obviously, if you are going to play this while you are home, it needs to be something that you can tolerate as well as your dogs. With regard to the science, the more low frequencies you can incorporate, the better. In other words, ocean waves are better than lake waves. Brown or Brownian noise with its abundance of lower frequencies is better than white noise. Pink noise is another option. FYI, the brown noise crossed Summer’s threshold into “scary” because it was just a tad too rumbly. Anyway, lower frequencies more effectively mask other low-frequency sounds, such as truck engines.
As with any management tool, introduce the sound you plan to use at a time when the scary sounds are unlikely, so it doesn’t come to predict them.
Here is sound-sensitive Summer (and in one case, Zani) demoing that the noises don’t bother her. (And for what it’s worth, they don’t distract me, either.)
**And of course, there are other resources if you don’t have the particular setup I describe. You can buy these sounds on a CD or playlist and play them on any kind of sound system. Whatever you use, test it on your dogs first. With ultra-long recordings such as you find on YouTube, you’ll have to listen to the whole thing to make sure there is nothing scary embedded in there.
I would love to hear if anyone else tries this or is doing anything similar. We are all listening to running water as I write this.
Addendum, 7/12/14
Just read a great tip by Yvette Van Veen of Awesome Dogs. She suggests that running the clothes dryer with a couple of shoes in it can mask thunder to some extent. I think this is a great idea. It is at least partly random and includes fairly low frequency bumps and thuds. You might need to desensitize your dog to it beforehand, but that would be “money in the bank” for later. Karyn K. on the FaceBook group Fearful Dogs, where the discussion took place, also suggested tennis balls in the dryer. Great ideas and I can’t wait to try them!
Related Posts
- Don’t Look Now: Window Film for Reactive Dogs
- Why Two Inches of “Soundproofing” Won’t Protect Your Dog From Thunder
Copyright Eileen Anderson 2013
Thank you for this article, Eileen. Do you have references you could share about the science of why lower frequency sounds are better to incorporate?
TIA!
Virginia
Hi Virginia, the article on auditory masking from Wikipedia covers some of the points.
Under the subheading “Similar frequencies”:
That means if you want to mask low frequency noises, you need a mask that includes low frequencies.
Under the subheading “Lower frequencies” :
That means that low frequency masks in general are more effective at masking.
There are links to primary sources in the article.
There is one more factor to consider, one that most of us know intuitively. That is that low frequency noises “carry” further. The sound waves are so large that things like buildings and trees don’t absorb them well. They do absorb higher frequencies just fine. That’s why we can hear thunder from many miles away, but not a loud car alarm at the same distance.
So the low frequency tones are the ones that get indoors with us with more ease to begin with.
This is not a scholarly article, but one that explains some of the difficulties of dampening low frequency sounds: Practical Soundproofing.
The trick with masking is that if a dog is scared by very low frequency rumbles, they will likely be scared of some similar sounds that one can play through speakers. But I did find some sounds that included some lower frequencies that my dog thought were just fine, and that did successfully mask many of her outdoor noise triggers. With a little desensitization of the generated sounds, I could use even more of them.
Hope this helps!
Superb, Eileen. Thanks very much.
About a year ago, a cousin of mine with working dogs on a working farm shared a tip he uses when one if his border collies needs to be kept housebound during illness: the
Golf Channel. :). He said it was the only TV that seemed soothing to the dogs, probably because it’s pretty much nonstop calm talking voices. He had previously tried white noise generators with no success.
My son’s pet border collie is sound sensitive and very independent. We had also had no luck with other masking noises, so we tried the Golf Channel, and sure enough, it worked! She finds it interesting and calming.
This won’t work with dogs who are anxious about stranger voices, of course. But it might be worth a try.
Loving all the tips! Thanks!
Thanks for this. We like air purifiers – the noisy round honeywell ones. Box fans seem to work well also but with our allergies (dogs and me), purifies seem to be the way to go.
I have Through a Dog’s Ear playing all the time. If things get extra noisy outside – like hammering, I will turn it up.
Also, I’ve found that doing the same things as the neighbors seems to help. i.e the dogs bark when neighbors are mowing lawn,but don’t bark when I’m outside mowing. So I sometimes mow at the same time as the neighbors :). I’ll also take when the neighbors are talking.
I’ve been experimenting with a thunderstorm CD. The dogs don’t even notice it. So I’m thinking about using it to mask the fireworks this year (I’ve used action movies in the past). I wonder if the thump of hip hop music would be useful. My Murphy doesn’t care for hard beats.
Too much whistling in the fireworks CD that I have. the dogs alert to it even at low volumes. So I’m not sure it’s going to work well for desensitization and certainly not for masking.
I tried some sound absorbing foam. No luck.
Thanks for these tips, as well. Sound absorbing foam has to be comparable in size to the sound waves, and low frequency ones are BIG (several feet in amplitude). So the foam would have to take up your house! Thinner might help with those whistles, though! I love reading about all the clever things you do for your dogs.
Great post, as usual, Eileen!
We’ve had quite a lot of success with thunderstorm masking. We started out with the Desensitization plan, playing a loop on my old iPod through the big speakers. Once we were at full volume, we’d play that loop for hours every night, through training and tv watching. I’d also leave it on when I left the house. I think it helped some, as did a Thundershirt.
We discovered early on that it really helped by masking real storms. It’ll be on tonight, as we get a few booms from the local fireworks. So glad we don’t live closer!
That’s great how you are combining masking and DS! Thanks for sharing. Hope it will inspire others (like me) to do more. A dog could make progress even when the people aren’t home all the time!
What a great way to help scared animals! Thanks for sharing. I saw this blog because Todd Moore from TMSOFT posted it on his facebook. If you have a specific sound you think would help animals, you could easily reach out to him through facebook. I am betting he would be very receptive to adding it.
Great, Brian! I’m glad you found your way here from there. I’ll think about what would work well, but really the White Noise app seems to have it covered pretty well!
Hi Eileen,
I love your articles. Thank you for putting so much time and effort into each one of them!
Here are two resources you may want to use. I recommend these to some of my noise fearful/phobic clients.
http://www.soundmasking.com/
http://www.acousticalsurfaces.com/ (great video and general information)
The “Bunker” method in the quietest, non-windowed room of the house works best for many of my clients.
Many thanks,
Russ
Great resources, Russell! I remember Acoustical Surfaces back from my engineering days. We bought some fancy dampening material from them. Thanks for the kind words.
What a great solution! I may have to give that a whirl this year! Incidentally, I am the exact same way with music… if it’s on, I end up listening instead of working or whatever else I’m supposed to be doing!
Yeah, music doesn’t work so well for me. Let me know how it works if you try some kind of noise. Thanks for the comment!
Do you have any tips for the best sound masking for urban noises such as: people and dogs walking past the house, construction, cans rattling, shopping carts, etc.?
I’m sorry Sarah, nothing specific. Most of those are mid to higher frequency noises, except some of the construction stuff. I would just experiment with different white and brown noise products. I would always lean to the lowest frequencies in the masking sound that the dog could be happy with (the brown noise goes heavier in the low frequencies), but once those start getting boomy they can be aversive in themselves. Here’s one to play with from Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-ZpvN3jV38 (I didn’t know until now that such things were on YouTube, so I’m glad you asked the question.) You would need to run it through speakers (as opposed to computer or phone sound output) to get some of the lower frequencies.
Further update on sound masking– I had so much success with storm masking that I wanted to find something for fireworks– the answer is Taiko Drumming! Found an album on iTunes and it works great. Fortunately I love Taiko, and now the neighbours are learning about it too!
I love Taiko and it’s perfect as long as the dogs are OK with it. Have you ever been to a live concert? So exciting!