This is a revival of a post from March 2020, rewritten. I wanted to play the accompanying video in my recent webinar, but had to cut it for time. So here it is on the blog instead!
Why do dogs seem OK with certain sounds and smells that are horrible to us? This is not a clickbait question. I am asking. I wonder about this because of an observation.
I’m not talking about a sudden, loud sound. That’s an easy answer. Sounds that are very loud and sudden can trigger the mammalian acoustic startle response, a group of reflexes that fire to prepare us for danger. You probably know how it feels. Fear conditioning can result from such a sound.
I’m also not talking about sounds loud enough to hurt a dog’s ears. There is at least one study that indicates that sounds above 120 decibels cause dogs to try to leave the area. Makes sense.
But what if it’s not strong enough to cause pain, but irritates people? That’s the kind of sound (or other stimulus) I’m talking about. Are they bored, bothered, or irritated by constant stimuli like we are?
I have never seen this in my dogs.
And before I go any further—I have two sound sensitive dogs and Lewis may be developing some sensible fears as well. I know first hand the tragedy of sound phobia. I probably wouldn’t react when I heard some loud sounds that triggered Zani. So I’m not discounting the dog’s genuine fear responses. I noticed the same thing: what bothered the dogs and what didn’t. And what can not be a little surprising.
It is about something that is done no busy with Zani.
Zani and Sound
After Zani was diagnosed with clinical sound phobia, he was helped by prescription drugs and later, careful use of desensitization and counterconditioning. His default response to hearing any kind of digital beep was positive. He turns to me or runs to me to find something to feed. Here is the before and after video.
Beware: the video has digital beeps in it.
From time to time, he would still melt at the sound he heard. It could be a bird, an alarm, or even some kind of click. And we couldn’t handle the faint hum of the smoke alarm battery. But even with the remaining scary stuff, his recovery time has been minutes, rather than hours or days before.
He is not afraid of thunder or fireworks (except sometimes the whistling kind). He had a seemingly normal startle response to unexpected loud noises, and did not remain in a state of fear.
But even though he wasn’t bothered by the banging and roaring, I was surprised by what happened one day in the yard.
What a Beautiful Day to Catch the Sun!
Sounds pretty idyllic, right? It’s a beautiful spring day at the end of March 2020. And as much as I want to leave the punchline inside the movie, here’s a spoiler for people with dogs who are afraid of roaring engines. There is a scary engine noise in the video.
That noise, friends, is the neighbor’s generator. It has a nasty, midrange, oscillating sound over some lower frequencies. It spins some very unpleasant tones. It’s about 90 decibels where the dogs hang out. The whole effect is very unpleasant – although apparently not for my dogs. Go figure.
Response To Noise: Fear vs. Irritability
I recently gave a webinar in which I explored the characteristics of noise that can be addictive to dogs. There are some types of noise for which there is evidence for this and some others that are likely. Two types are sounds loud enough to cause physical harm, and sudden sounds that evoke a startle response. I focus on my dogs whenever there is a strange noise, to see if they show fear, irritation, or if they vote with their paws and walk away.
But thinking back, the only time I see them leave the scene is in this situation is when they are afraid.
Have I ever seen a dog leave the scene due to sensory irritation? A constant repeating noise, flashing or very bright light, or even a very sweet smell? Not really. The only example I can dredge up is that I’ve seen the equivalent of an “eww” response when a dog sniffs citrus, but he just backs off a bit. He didn’t leave the room. This is especially interesting because of the sensitivity of dog noses. Scents automatically have a certain duration. We were warned not to overwhelm the dogs with the scent. But given the comparative strengths of our olfactory senses, we tend to overwhelm them all the time. I have my own example below.
Response to Bad Smells
I don’t use a lot of scented products. No candles, incense, room sprays, plugins, or scented laundry or body products. There is one exception. I make melt-and-pour soap, and I have a few small amounts of high-quality essential oils. Sometimes I can smell the soap. (Much lighter than commercial soap.) In the past, I made a few bars of soap, and I accidentally spilled too much violet essential oil in one batch. The smell was so “strong” that it gave me a headache.
I don’t want to waste things. So I tried to remove the smell from the soap. I left the completed bars of soap in a closed room for a few days to air out. It didn’t help, and the smell in the house is still nauseating. I let them sit in the sun on the back porch for a few days. Didn’t help. Finally, I melted them, which soap mavens say removes the fragrance if you heat it up enough. We were told that the oil will vaporize at high temperatures, so I let the soap mixture boil for a while. It did help, but it just took the fragrance down the headache to disgusting range. But at that point, I was able to bag them up and put them in a drawer, and that held up. The house is back to normal (according to my olfactory sense). I took them out one by one to use. I am the latter, and will probably never use a violet fragrance again after using these.
Now, what did my dogs do during this smell attack? Nothing. They didn’t come into the kitchen saying, “What the hell?” And whenever they are in the kitchen in a burst of violet smell, they don’t leave. They didn’t ask to go out. As far as I could see, they didn’t even respond. It just seems like a silly human-related incident that has nothing to do with them.
We read a lot about dogs’ amazing sense of smell. There is no doubt about it. But they also seem very tolerant, or habitual, or something!
What Did You Observe?
I am not making any claims about dog behavior in this post. I don’t have enough information. These observations of mine “prove” nothing. But I’m curious. What did you observe? Have you ever seen a dog leave the scene in response to a continue (not sudden) visual, auditory, or olfactory stimulus when they are not afraid of it? Have you ever seen the equivalent of the human itch response? The “I can’t stand listening to the incessant creaking/roaring/rattlement noise for one more minute!” response?
How about you border collies?
I wonder if it’s a cognitive difference. A lot of stimuli that people don’t like are repeated, including my neighbor’s generator. Maybe we have a lower tolerance for that than dogs?
If the noise is very loud and persistent, our irritation response is activated. Noise below the threshold for damage to the human ear has been shown to have negative neurological and cognitive effects in humans with prolonged exposure (Westman & Walters, 1981).
I used brown noise to hide the scary sounds for the dogs, but it’s not something I would choose to leave playing otherwise.
Habituation
We—dogs and humans—are used to it. But case-by-case, it is difficult to predict whether we will habituate or become sensitized to a stimulus. I don’t mind the repeated waves of cicadas in the summer, that is, when I’m inside. For those who haven’t heard of them—they can be strong. I have a harder time with things like big waterfalls and crashing waves in the ocean. The masking effects of those low frequencies bother me. I feel unsafe because I can’t hear other things in the environment. I don’t think I can get rid of them. The neighbor’s generator had a similar effect on me, but apparently not on my dogs.
Competing Reinforcers
Some smart people are going to point out that maybe the dogs have found the sun so pleasant that they tolerate the noise. That’s possible, but it’s a big yard with a lot of places they want to warm up. And they look relaxed! I could be wrong, but it seems to me that they don’t really think, or they don’t think they can escape at least some of the constant noise by moving to another sunny spot in the yard further away from the generator.
As a friend recently said, “Don’t you want to tell us?”
Sources
- Blackshaw, JK, Cook, GE, Harding, P., Day, C., Bates, W., Rose, J., & Bramham, D. (1990). Aversive response of dogs to ultrasonic, sonic and flashing light units. Applied Animal Behavior Science, 25(1-2), 1-8.
- Westman, JC, & Walters, JR (1981). Noise and stress: a comprehensive approach. Perspectives on environmental health, 41291-309.
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Copyright 2020, 2023 Eileen Anderson
