Why Do Pets Endure Some Terrible Sounds (and Smells)?

My pets’ action to a really loud, continuous sound in the backyard was not what I expected. Has your pet dog done this?

This is a revival of a post from March 2020, considerably rewritten. I wanted to play the included video in my recent webinar, but needed to suffice for time. So here it remains in the blog rather!

Why do dogs seem to be okay with some noises and smells that are horrible to us? This is not a clickbait concern. I’m asking. I’m questioning it because of an observation.

I’m not talking about sudden, loud sounds. That’s an easy answer. Sounds that are really loud and extremely sudden can activate the mammalian acoustic startle action, a group of reflexes that fire to prepare us for risk. You all most likely know what that feels like. Fear conditioning can arise from such a sound.

I’m also not speaking about sounds loud enough to harm pet dogs’ ears. There’s at least one study that indicates that sounds over 120 decibels trigger dogs to attempt to leave the area. Makes good sense.

However what if it’s not loud sufficient to cause discomfort, however would be annoying to humans? That’s the sort of sound (or other stimulus) I’m speaking about. Do they ever get annoyed, disrupted, or irritated at continuous stimuli like we do?

I haven’t seen it in my pet dogs.

And before I go on– I’ve had two noise sensitive pets and Lewis might be acquiring some sound fears as well. I know the tragedy of sound phobia firsthand. I will most likely never not react when I hear the specific high pitched beeps that activated Zani. So I am not reducing pets’ genuine worry actions at all. It’s simply that I discover both: what bothers canines and what does not. And what doesn’t can be quite unexpected.

This is about something that did not bother Zani.

Zani and Sound

After Zani was diagnosed with medical sound fear, she was vastly helped by prescription medications and later, mindful application of desensitization and counterconditioning. Her default response to hearing any sort of digital beep changed into a favorable one. She turned to me or ran to me to look for a treat. Here’s a previously and after video.

Caution: the video has digital beeps in it.

Every so often, she would still melt below hearing a noise. It may be a bird, an alarm, or even some type of clicking. And we never dealt with the low battery chirp of the smoke detector. But even with the staying scary things, her recovery time became minutes, rather than the hours or days it used to be.

She was not afraid of thunder or fireworks (other than often the whistling kind). She had an apparently normal startle action to unforeseen loud sounds, and didn’t remain in a worry state.

But even though she wasn’t troubled by booms and roars, what occurred one day in the yard surprised me.

What a Lovely Day To Get Some Sun!

This scene is not as tranquil as it looks. Looks quite picturesque, ideal? It was a beautiful spring day at the end of March 2020. And as much as I ‘d like to leave the punchline inside the film, here’s a spoiler for those people with pets who hesitate of roaring engines. There is a horrible engine noise in the video.

That sound, my pals, was the next-door neighbor’s generator. It has a nasty, midrange, oscillating sound on top of some lower frequencies. It spins off some unlovely overtones. It had to do with 90 decibels where the pet dogs were hanging out. The complete result is very unpleasant– although apparently not for my dogs. Go figure.

Action To Noise: Fear Vs. Irritation

I recently provided a webinar in which I checked out the qualities of noise that could be inherently aversive to dogs. There are a couple of kinds of noises for which there is evidence for this and some others that are likely. Two types are sounds that are loud enough to be physically harmful, and abrupt sounds that evoke a startle response. I focus on my pet dogs whenever there’s an odd sound, to see whether they show worry, irritation, or whether they vote with their feet and get away.

However reflecting, the only time I see them leave the scene remains in this scenario is when they are afraid.

Have I ever seen a canine leave the scene since of a sensory inflammation? A continuous repetitive sound, blinking or super-bright light, or even a frustrating smell? Not truly. The only example I can dredge up is that I have actually seen the equivalent of an “eww” response when a dog smelled citrus, but she just backed off a little. She didn’t leave the room. This is specifically interesting given the level of sensitivity of pet dogs’ noses. Smells immediately have some period. We are cautioned not to overwhelm dogs with odor. However offered the relative strengths of our olfactory senses, we most likely overwhelm them all the time. I have actually got my own example listed below.

Response to Obnoxious Odor

I do not utilize numerous aromatic products. No candle lights, incense, room sprays, plugins, or aromatic laundry or body items. There’s but one exception. I make melt-and-pour soap, and I have some percentages of high-quality important oils. I in some cases scent the soap gently. (A lot more gently than commercial soap.) A while back, I made some bars of soap, and I accidentally dumped method too much violet essential oil into a batch. The smell was so “loud” it provided me a headache.

One of my soaps I hate to lose things. So I tried to get the odor out of the soap. I left the finished bars of soap out in a closed room for a few days to air out. Didn’t assist, and the odor in your home was still nauseating. I let them sit in the sun on the back patio for a few days. Didn’t assist. Finally, I remelted them, which the soap mavens say eliminates fragrance if you get it hot enough. We’re informed that the oil will vaporize at heats, so I even let the soap mixture boil for a while. This did help, but it just took the fragrance down from headache range to obnoxious. However at that point, I was able to bag them up and put them in a drawer, and that was bearable. Your home returned to normal (per my olfactory sense). I take them out one by one to use. I’m on the last one, and I’ll most likely never ever use violet scent once again after I utilize them up.

Now, what did my canines do throughout this attack by odor? Nothing. They didn’t can be found in the kitchen area stating, “What the hell?” And whenever they were in the cooking area throughout a burst of violet odor, they didn’t leave. They didn’t ask to go outside. As far as I might observe, they didn’t react at all. This appeared like just another dumb human-related incident that was irrelevant to them.

We read a lot about pets’ fantastic sense of smell. There is definitely no doubt of it. But they also seem likewise to be incredibly tolerant, or habituated, or something!

What Have You Observed?

Hark, the tune of the generator! I am making no claims about pet habits in this post. I do not have adequate info. These observations of mine “show” nothing. However I’m curious. What have you observed? Have you ever seen a pet dog leave the scene in reaction to a continuous (not sudden) visual, auditory, or olfactory stimulus when they weren’t afraid of it? Have you seen the equivalent of the human irritation response? The “I can’t listen to that incessant scraping/roaring/rattling noise for another minute!” reaction?

How about you folks with border collies?

I do question if it’s a distinction in cognition. A lot of the stimuli humans don’t like are repeated, my neighbor’s generator consisted of. Perhaps we have a lower tolerance for that than dogs do?

If the sound is really loud and ongoing, our irritated reaction is practical. Noise that is well under the threshold for human ear damage has been shown to have unfavorable neurological and cognitive results on human beings when there is a period direct exposure (Westman & Walters, 1981).

I have actually utilized brown sound to mask scary sounds for the dogs, but it is not something I would choose to leave playing otherwise.

Habituation

We– dogs and humans– habituate. However case-by-case, it’s hard to anticipate whether we will habituate or sensitize to a stimulus. I don’t mind the recurring swell of cicadas in the summer season, that is, when I’m inside. For those who haven’t heard them– they can be loud. I have a more difficult time with things like huge waterfalls and crashing ocean waves. The masking effects of those low frequencies trouble me. I don’t feel safe because I can’t hear other things in the environment. I don’t believe I might ever tune them out. The neighbor’s generator has a comparable result on me, however apparently not on my dogs.

The song of the generator Completing Reinforcers Some astute folks are going to point out that maybe the pets discovered remaining in the sun so enjoyable that they were enduring the noise. That’s possible, but it’s a big backyard with lots of locations they like to bask. And they appeared so relaxed! I might be incorrect, but it appears to me that either they really didn’t mind, or it didn’t strike them that they could get away a minimum of a few of the constant sound by transferring to a different bright place in the yard that was further away from the generator.

As a good friend stated just recently, “Don’t you wish they could tell us?”

References

Blackshaw, J. K., Cook, G. E., Harding, P., Day, C., Bates, W., Rose, J., & Bramham, D. (1990 ). Aversive responses of canines to ultrasonic, sonic and flashing light units. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 25(1-2), 1-8.
Westman, J. C., & Walters, J. R. (1981 ). Noise and stress: a thorough approach. Environmental health perspectives, 41, 291-309.