Through A Dog's Ear: Vol I - Music CD

This CD is well worth a try for owners seeking to calm their dog during thunderstorms/fireworks, ease separation anxiety, and add some calm to stressfull environments such as boarding kennels. Other applications are explored in the CD booklet as well. I agree with author Joshua Leeds in this CBS interview, "the only that this music could hurt a human being or a dog is if they ate the CD."

The Through A Dog's Ear -- Volume 1 is the companion CD to the Through A Dog's Ear book and starter CD that I reviewed here.

I especially like the included 26-page booklet that this CD comes with. It provides enough of the research and "how-to" information to get people started and hopefully interested in this topic to read more about it. The full version book, of course, has expanded information, but a listener will not be lost by purchasing the CD by itself.

The first thing I noticed with this music is that it is slow. It takes a little while to get used to the slower tempo and lower pitch than one is used to hearing. The piano music is beautifully played and several classical pieces are represented.

I must say that for me, the music is calming and I play it when I really need to concentrate and get work done; i.e. no checking email or surfing the web. This music really helps me accomplish the tasks at hand. Sure, it could be placebo effect, but I always have music on while I work, and unlike other choices where I tend to sing along and get distracted too easily, this music is both calming and focusing.

However, the focus of this musical research is on dogs, not humans. I have one canine companion to test this out on, but admittedly, she is pretty calm most of the time. She does really seem to zonk out when she is in my office and I have this music on, but this is too limiting of a 'study'. I plan to try playing the music when she is anxious, such as during a thunderstorm, or excited/spastic as she often is when we arrive back home. The key is to play this music often and before being anxious from the stressful sounds or events otherwise, the dog may start to associate the music with the stressors, which is the exact opposite of what we are trying to accomplish.