Music Therapy
A Little Background
Music affects us and our emotions. While listening to loud dynamic music brings out strong energy – we might drive faster. We would not play such music to calm a baby for nap time. Films use music to evoke emotion. Music therapy is also used for children – especially in special education.
For the past several years, music’s effect on dogs has been studied. Primatologist Charles Snowdon, PhD and expert on animals and their responses to sound with cellist and composer David Teie collaborated to delve deeper into the research. They fine-tuned the past research to discover exactly what characteristics in music dogs react best to. They discovered that not all classical music is the same. Some acoustic characteristics are more therapeutic for dogs making some compositions conducive to relaxing animals. After all, many classical compositions are quite robust and might increase anxiety when a dog is anxious.
Suggestions
Using that research, there have been several CDs containing music for animals, but Pet Acoustics was developed to address the hearing specific to dogs (there is a cat version as well). Researcher Janet Marlow, M.A. is a composer who created the Pet Acoustics device.
Different species have different hearing ranges and brain activity. Pet Acoustics is a Bluetooth speaker that contains a music compilation that contains music specifically geared toward the hearing and brain activity of dogs to induce calmness. It addresses several issues. To read about how music affects dogs you may check out my article, Pet Tech – Music & Dogs.
A Comforting Pal
I don’t know about this product, but it sounded interesting to me so I wanted to share with you. The SnugglePuppies are toys that have a part that goes inside the stuffed animal that sounds like a soothing heartbeat. It also has a warm pack that is put inside so your dog can feel the warmth of his pal.
Another product, Mother’s Comfort Heartbeat Pillow uses a similar concept as well as similar features to the Snuggle Puppy. It has a “real feel heartbeat” and provides gentle warmth as well. This pillow is shaped like a pillow which is made with comfy sherpa material
