Thunderstorms, Fireworks, and Excessive Loud Noise

I was visiting New York City recently and wondered if I was the only person around with sensitive ears? Subways, sirens, and traffic were quite difficult for me. I always had my fingers blocking my ears yet, nobody else seemed to even notice the loud noise. Apparently, most people had simply acclimated: loud noise is the price you pay in the city. Most had headphones or ear buds, which I am sure helped to cancel external sounds, but probably at a cost to their auditory health.

Dogs hear twice as high as we humans. Cats, 3x as high. This means they are taking in frequencies that we can’t even hear. For pets in big cities, I can’t even imagine the soundscape they are trying to make sense of… and all just because we have located them with us in these terribly loud environments. Even inside, the insult to the nervous system can be great.

A long time ago when I was living in Manhattan, our beautiful, large Japanese Akita heard a car backfire and ran across Broadway and was hit by a cab. She survived, but I’m sure there was lifetime damage.

What can we do for our pets when they are assaulted by unnatural sounds that they cannot figure out. Rita the Akita was merely running to get home, to be safe in an environment she perceptually understood.

We know that we (people and pets) are all wired a little differently. Some of us can handle louder sounds or brighter lights when others are uncomfortable or even pained.

What can we do for our pets?

Basically, there are four solutions:

Mask
Distract
Condition
Move to a quiet place

Masking

Masking sound refers to the process of using a secondary sound to cover up unwanted sounds. iCalmPet has many hours of classical and reggae music that will help your pet by covering up the offending sounds (caused by amplitude and lack of predictable pattern that comes with thunderstorms, fireworks, and city sounds.

Distraction

Distraction, for a short term, skirts the default mechanism of the brain which is trying to find a pattern. This is not the best long-lasting curative for noise sensitive beings.

Conditioning

Of these first three solutions, this is my favorite. (Even if you move to a quieter place, loud sounds seem to be a part of human culture.) Conditioning is a psychological term that refers to accustoming a person or animal to behave in a certain way.

iCalmPet music and speakers were designed specifically for this acclimation. If you’re dog or cat comes to associate our progressively slowing music with the pet household being calm, this is conditioning. Some call it becoming accustomed to something; pthers, habituation. I think of conditioning of pets as a perceptual/psychological training. You take an action, your pet comes to understand and respond in kind. Our music is calm and gentle. If your pets see you get calm and gentle with the music, they will habituate to this feeling.

Move to a Quiet Place

Go for it! Find a nice quiet place for you and your dog.

Recommendations

Want to learn more? Follow the links for further information:

iCalmPet Ruff ‘n Ready Speaker with the music that fits your pet household:

Calm Your Canine (3-hrs), Cat Calming (3-hrs), Calm Your Puppy (3-hrs), Elderly Canine (3-hrs), Separation Anxiety (16-hrs), Thunderstorms (1-hr), Fireworks (1-hr), Noise Phobias for Cats, and many others.

iCalmPet music is available in multiple formats and can be played without our speaker. We like the Ruff ‘n Ready speaker because it’s in the two colors that dogs and cats actually see – blue and yellow (another example of habituation).

Some people have animals who react massively and even aggressively to loud noises. For some pets, simply playing specialized dog calming music will be a satisfactory remedy. For others, taking the time to retrain your pet to bring them back into non-terrorized behavior will have long lasting results and be great for your entire pet household. We collaborated on five specialty albums with renown trainer, Victoria Stilwell. Within these recordings she has provided training protocols that may serve you well.