THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

First off, thanks to everyone at All About Dogs and all the participants of the seminar in Woodbridge, VA. Every audience has a personality all its own (anyone every done temperament tests on audiences?), and this group was a delight from beginning to end. About 150 people and I spent the weekend in an inquiry about emotions, ethology, people and dogs. And as usual, I learned a lot. Several people reported that they too had played the music from Through A Dog’s Ear, (designed by a musicologist and a veterinary neurologist to soothe and calm dogs) and that they had seen impressive results. One person said her dogs now lay down and go to sleep as soon as she turns on the music. (Don’t expect miracles though… no sound is powerful enough to sedate an exercise-starved puppy who just got out of his crate!)

I remember learning in graduate school about a French researcher (my apologies, I don’t remember the name) who played classical music to pregnant women as they lay down to nap. Unlike puppies, humans can hear well in utero in the last month (at least) of development, and the unborn babies could hear the music being played perfectly well. We heard a tape recording of what the music sounded like in utero… (yep, they put a microphone inside some incredibly agreeable woman!). It sounded like the sounds you hear when you are underwater, which makes perfect sense if you think about it. But you could definitely discern the melody.

It turned out that, after birth, the babies who who heard the music while their mother slept during the last phase of pregnancy would go to sleep almost immediately when the music was played again. That finding supports the claims of the authors of A Dog’s Ear, (and of my own research in the 80′s) that sound can influence the behavior of the receiver, and can act to soothe and relax the individuals who hear it.

Over all, it was a great weekend, thanks to the hosts and a wonderful group of people in the audience. (And oh, those demo dogs! Can I PLEASE take them all home with me?) Here’s a fun shot of all the great folks at All About Dogs:

On an altogether completely different note, here’s something else I am happy about. I bought a new, quite expensive ram who was delivered last week, and was a bit concerned because he didn’t seem to be that interested in the ewes. He was also much shorter and smaller than I expected; the breed does tend to be very short in the leg (think Corgi), but I still was surprised at how very short he seemed, based on his hunky photo sent by the breeder. So I was a bit worried: In the past my new rams have been crazed as soon as they were introduced into the flock, but this guy seemed a bit, uh, lackadaisical. I switched his name from Fabio (see his glam shot below) to Ferdinand, after the bull who just wanted to pick flowers. The breeder, a wonderfully responsible woman at Crane Creek, suggested I try what’s called “breeding paint,” which you smear on the ram’s brisket and then gets transferred to the butt of the ewe if she’s been bred. So Monday morning Jim and I mixed up a bright red powder with olive oil (no kidding, someone asked if we added garlic), and smeared it all over the chest and brisket of the ram.

Because I had liked the way the ram had been acting around one of the ewes when we caught him, I went back to check just a few minutes after we smeared on the paint. Sure enough, Brittany had a bright red butt! And this morning I discovered red everywhere… the ram has been a busy boy, and has bred 4 ewes in 24 hours. The only problem is that the barn pen looks like a scene from a slasher movie. I expect people to knock breathlessly on the door to tell me that something is terrible wrong with my flock.

Based on all the above, the perfect name for the ram has now come to me: ROBERT REDFORD, Redford for short. Very very hunky and handsome, a class act all around, but shorter than you expected.

Here’s his hunky glam shot and a shot from “the morning after”: (he’s the one on the far left)

Well, no more storms, thank heavens, but I did read more of Through a Dog’s Ear. In it the authors talk about the effects of sound on the health of humans, as well as that of dogs. I’m as sound sensitive as a stereotypical sheltie, so I pricked up my metaphorical ears. Here I am, some one who can’t stand noisy restaurants (take me to a noisy one and watch me start to tongue flick), is exhausted at loud parties and craves a quiet country morning with nothing but bird song in the air. (Excuse the digression, but I am reminded of a dear city friend, who was visiting me and friends at our places in the country years ago. We all sat on a hill, overlooking a tangerine sky at sunset when somene commented how peaceful it was. Royce, as urban as they come, said “Peaceful? It’s a racket out here. I can’t hear myself think for all the crickets and the damn birds singing.?”

Well, surely one person’s noise is another’s music. But still, the book gets you thinking about how much peripheral sound there is in our lives, and in the lives of our dogs. I was lying on the living room couch reading the book, at about 6 in the morning, the dogs chewing on their frozen, stuffed Kongs. As I read I realized that I had turned on the television out of habit, and the news was nattering in the background. I tend to mute the sound during commercials, but what was I doing reading with the TV on in the first place? I didn’t used to do that, and as I read I realized that more and more I’ve gotten in the habit of leaving the TV on whether I was watching or not. When he’s there, my guy notices the sound, and is better than I am about turning it off–he’s as sound sensitive as I am (very handing when looking for restaurants together when traveling!).

For the last two days I’ve been more thoughtful about the acoustic environment in which I and my dogs live. After all, if constant sound can tire and stress out a person, why not a sound sensitive dog? (like, uh, my Border collies? Right now I’m at the office, and all I can hear is the air conditioning blowing through the ducts and a little traffic trundling down the highway through my little mid-western town. Tonight I’ll go home and listen to the gold finches chick chick chick-o-ree as they fly over the garden and the nighthawks peenting over head. Well, of course, then there’s going to be all that panting while the dogs play…

Here’s a photo of six month old Brodie, who I am babysitting for a dear friend. She is a certified Animal Assisted Therapist, and Brodie is applying for the job as the animal part of the team. I suspect he will start collecting his salary soon. Willie certainly hopes so, they are best friends and play together perfectly. How sweet the sound.

5 AM. I wake up to Lassie’s nails clicking on the floor (wasn’t I going to trim them last night?) as a boom of thunder shakes the farmhouse. Damn.  Why is it that Lassie’s slight discomfort of storms has become more serious as her hearing degrades?  Surely it should go the other way around.

We pad downstairs and lay down together on the carpet, she spooning against me as I stroked her head. (And no, it won’t make her more afraid of storms…. check out my column coming out in Bark magazine soon.)  “Eaa-a-a-a-a-a-a-sy” I crooned, using my voice to help her calm herself.  Why didn’t I bring the CD home from “Through a Dog’s Ear,” a new and fantastic book about the effect of sound on dogs? The CD has music
designed by the authors to calm dogs, and both it and the book are invaluable resources for anyone who is interested in dog behavior.

The authors know what they are talking about.  Susan Wagner is a veterinary neurologist and Joshua Leeds is an expert in psychoacoustics. They got together to investigate the effect of sound on dogs, and to create music that could act to calm nervous canines.  Their work is ‘music’ to my ears (sorry), given that my dissertation research was on the effects of different types of sounds on the behavior of domestic animals.  In brief, I found that short, rapidly repeated notes increased activity, while two different types of notes were used all around the world to slow or stop animals. Long, extended one-noted signals (like “Whooooooooaaaa” and “Staaaaaaay”) were used to slow or calm animals, while one, sharp highly-modulated note (think up and down in a brief period of time) were used to stop fast moving animals (‘DOWN!” or “WHOA!).

The research in Through a Dog’s Ear’s follows those same general principles, but adds more, including “harmonic complexity” as well as carefully designed tempos and note intervals.  The authors did research (I can’t wait to see it) that suggested that their calming CD really did settle dogs down.  I talked about this at a seminar I gave in Madison, WI and one participant said her shelter had been using for a while, and it was extremely successful. (So  much so that the dogs who wanted to play chose to go outside, presumably to avoid the effects of the music.) We all listened to the CD, and I swear I had to stop because we all would’ve have gone to sleep. (The authors address that too… they found that dogs settled after just a few minutes, and they could pick up the beat after that to keep the people awake without disturbing the dogs!). I’d love to hear if you have tried it yourself.

I was so impressed with the book that we offer it on our website now (patriciamcconnell.com), but you can get it in lots of places. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but this morning’s storm put finishing it at the top of my reading list.  I’m putting it and the CD in my “take home from the office” bag right now, so that I’ll have it at the farm tonight and tomorrow if the storms come back.

At worst, maybe the  CD will help ME go back to sleep while I cuddle with Lassie through the next set of storms. Here’s my Lassie girl, all fourteen and a half sweet-as-cream years of her.