Sounds of Silence - A Review Of "Through a Dog’s Ear: Using Sound to Improve the Health & Behavior of Your Canine Companion"

Londoners don’t seem to notice the noise. On the streets and on the trains, even in their own comfortable homes, the natives seemed to have an uncanny ability to ignore that which was so apparent to me: the constant, living roar of the city. The sounds of people; the sounds of automobiles; trains barreling on clattering tracks; cell phones, pagers, and electronic apparatus jangling in an off-kilter cadence; and even the lush beauty of Kew, that 350-acre natural temple, pierced at intervals by Heathrow’s traffic soaring overhead. I couldn’t tune it out. My tired brain struggled to register and record each reverberation. Soon, even the natural soundscape seemed deafening to me. I began to wonder if, by osmosis, I had borrowed from my four-legged companions their super-sensitive canine hearing. But then I noticed that London’s furry citizens seemed immune to the din, too. Or were they?

“Sound is a nutrient,” claim authors Joshua Leeds and Susan Wagner in their book Through a Dog’s Ear: Using Sound to Improve the Health & Behavior of Your Canine Companion. “We can either charge or discharge the nervous system by the sounds we take in through both air and bone conduction (p. 23).” An interesting concept set down in an equally interesting, if brief, book. My week in London afforded me ample reading time as I traveled from sight to sight within the conduit of cacophony that is London’s Underground. I finished my reading quickly and, overwhelmed by the city’s voice as I was, found within the pages resonance to the depths of my soul. But then a whispering more reverberant than the constant squeal and clamor of rush-hour traffic began to build within me. Where were the numbers? Could science back up the book’s assertions? Could sound have as strong an impact on our lives and those of our canine companions as the authors allege?

Leeds is a psychoacoustician, a scientist who studies the human perception of sound. He is also a music producer and works with such alternative-medicine gurus as Dr. Andrew Weil and Louise Hay. Wagner, aside from possessing a name which evokes thoughts of Valkyries striding the heavens more than dogs snoozing peacefully in the sun, holds a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine and is an adjunct assistant professor at the Ohio State University Veterinary College. Their credentials seem sound, if you’ll excuse my use of the word. Their work is based on well-known research by Dr. Alfred Tomatis, a French otolaryngologist, who pioneered a sound-based alternative-medicine approach for treating various ailments that later became known as The Mozart Effect. But controversy abounds. Little independent research undergirds Tomatis’ lifework. And though a public eager for solace has at times embraced psychoacoustics, and now its non-human equivalent bioacoustics, the scientific community remains largely mute.

There is dissonance even within the book itself. On page 22, Leeds and Wagner state, “Studies have shown that many common human behavioral and psychological issues may have an auditory component: attention and focus issues, anxiety, depression, and sensory integration challenges, for example. Is it possible these issues also apply to our dogs?” A mere two pages later, however, they admit, “There is no such thing as a sound-related illness in people.” Still, they say, studies have “found that the anxiety produced by a perceived loss of control over personal environments, including noise, caused over-stressed bodies to become fertile ground for disease (p. 24).” So which is it? Is excess sound harmful to one’s mind and body or not? And can the proper use of sound truly nourish the body and help one to heal?

Certainly my dogs and I are affected by sound. Thunderstorms, sirens, and fireworks are as apt to set our heartbeats to flamenco rhythms as soft rain and birdsong induce legato sighs which harmonize with the wind. We are not alone. The world is full of music of sorts, and we are audience to and part of the symphony. Archeologists have even become interested in the use of sound in ancient cultures, and no longer relegate to warehouses the broken, silent instruments of gourd, reed, and clay they excavate with the past. From 15,000-year-old Ukrainian drums – perhaps used by humans to communicate with our newly adopted canine brothers? – to Roman war-trumpets and Aztec “Whistles of Death”, to the musical ideals of the Enlightenment and beyond, sound, whether natural or created, has clearly always been important to humanity. But do we choose to dance to its rhythms – or to those of a different drummer – or does it drive us in a steady tattoo unto death? Unfortunately Through a Dog’s Ear does little to calm the savage beast of debate.

Though touched by the emotionally-charged anecdotes Leeds and Wagner offered up in Through a Dog’s Ear, I was disappointed by the lack of hard facts presented in its 156 pages and on the corresponding website. And after a thorough internet search, I remain disappointed. In fact, I found many more emotional offerings purporting to lend scientific validity to Tomatis and his academic descendants – albeit mostly housed on sites selling goods and services related to said science. But I also found reports of well-conducted studies showing no effect whatever of The Mozart Effect on human or animal behavior.

Still, I am intrigued. Even in the relative quiet of my Kansas home, I find myself straining to hear the book’s message above my mind’s steady clamoring for scientific proof. I want to believe – I just don’t know that I can based on the information presented to date. Through a Dog’s Ear: Using Sound to Improve the Health & Behavior of Your Canine Companion is published by Sounds True, Inc., and the authors’ premise that “many anxiety behaviors common in both the American people and their dogs may be the result of cumulative sensory overload, starting with the sound environments in which they live (p. 5)” does indeed sound true – but is it?