Why Your Dog Dislikes the Vacuum Cleaner.

Your dog hears things that you do not. Regarding some sounds, their hearing is hundreds of times better than yours, other sounds, you hear similarly. Where they excel is in the high-frequency range of sound. Dogs inherited this ability from their wild ancestors. Wolves, for instance add to their diet, by often preying on small rodents, like mice, voles and rats. They all make high-pitched squeaks and as they move around in their world of leaves and grasses on the ground, all that rustling also makes high-frequency sounds that alerts canines to their presence.

Our ears are tuned to sounds that are significant in our lives – the frequencies that correlate to hearing and decoding human speech, they fall in measurements of between 500 – 4,000 Hz and the peak sensitivity of your ear is adapted for a frequency right in the middle of the speech range – about 2,000 Hz. The maximum sensitivity for a dog is tuned much higher, at about 8,000 Hz. You are most likely well aware that your dog hears things you do not, when all of a sudden, they get up and go to the door or window looking for who is approaching the house, minutes before the doorbell is rung or the mail is dropped in the box.

In the book, “How Dogs Think,” by Stanley Coren, he makes a nice comparison of the difference in humans and dogs hearing abilities using a piano as an analogy.  If you wanted to get an idea of the highest notes a young person might be able to hear, you would add 28 more keys to the right–hand side of the piano, (the higher note side) however the majority of people would not hear those highest keys.  “As we age, the pounding of sound waves against the mechanism in our ears, cause mechanical damage and we lose the ability to hear higher-pitched sounds first.” (from “How Dogs Think”)

Hearing much higher pitched sounds than people, dogs ranges are between around 47,000 and 65,000 Hz. depending upon the dog. Getting back to that imaginary piano, that means you’d add 48 more keys to the right side of the piano to reach the top note a dog can hear.

The fact that dogs have a greater sensitivity to sound than humans do, especially in the higher frequencies explains why your dog may leave the room when you turn on the vacuum cleaner.  Common appliances, such as vacuum cleaners, motorized lawn mowers, and many power tools, cause distress for your dog.  Many of these machines, have rapidly rotating shafts on motors that run the fans, blades and bits which produce high frequency, “shrieks,” which can be painfully loud for your dog. With our less sensitive human ears, we remain blissfully ignorant of these shrieking sounds, not being able to hear the high pitched noise.

Another example of their sensitive hearing, I’m sure you are familiar with is, if you rip open a new bag of treats or food, no matter where your dog is in the house, they come running to the kitchen  to see what you’ve got.

Speaking of which, NutriSource Pet Foods, has a brand new treat available now – Jerky treats for dogs.

In the NutriSource line, it comes in four flavors with over 95% of meat with multiple proteins for yummy variety.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And in the Pure Vita line, which is a single ingredient protein, it also comes in four flavors.

 

 

 

 

 

All of the jerky treats, have pumpkin in them which is naturally rich in fiber, and vitamin C and contain organic apple cider vinegar which naturally preserves and keeps the treats moist. Best yet, there are no added sugar ingredients in the treats.

If you’d like a free bag of the new jerky treats, write me at Susan@raisingyourpaws.com,and send a photo of your dog.

 

Listen to Raising Your Paws Podcast Episode 40.

Title: Reasons to See the Vet if your Dog Suffers Nighttime Anxiety & Why Cats Suck on Clothing.

Full Show Notes for the Episode.

In this episode, I’ll look at three instances where looks can be deceiving – the theme for this week’s show.

Does your cat pad her feet up and down on your chest or stomach which is called kneading? And/or ever suck on you or your clothing? Even though you know you are not a cat, and couldn’t deceive anyone, you don’t fool your cat. To them, you resemble its mother well enough that they engage in those behaviors with you. In this episode, I explain why and how.

Anxiety in a dog at night, can be a sign of Alzheimer’s disease and often by the look of your dog, it results in this diagnosis – but it can also be something else. Don’t be fooled by appearances. My guest for this show, is veterinary behaviorist, Dr. Nicolas Dodman, author of two books spoken about during the show, “Good Old Dog” and “Pets on the Couch.” He explains other reasons for your dog’s night time jitters and impresses on you why it’s so important to take your dog to see the vet.

Have you heard people say the dog attacked totally out of the blue – for no reason? Mostly, there are three very distinct reasons – the causes for dog aggression. Although most of us, don’t recognize the signs nor understand the triggers. In this episode, I tell the circumstances in which dogs actually do attack with no provocation at all. It does come from out of no-where that we can see – but not being visible is the clue for what is happening to cause a dog to go berserk. I’ll relate the experiences of Dr. Nicolas Dodman, from his book, Pets on the Couch.

 Please tell your friends about the podcast and subscribe for free on i-Tunes, or your favorite podcast app. Subscribe on Stitcher, for android phones here.

Additional Resources for this Episode:

Amazon link to: Good Old Dog: Expert advice for Keeping Your Aging Dog Happy, Healthy and Comfortable, Book by the Faculty of the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. Edited by Dr. Nickolas Dodman with Lawrence Lindner.

Source for the story about seizures in dogs: Pets on the Couch: Neurotic Dogs, Compulsive Cats, Anxious Birds, and the New Science of Animal Psychiatry. By Nicholas Dodman, DVM.

For more about Dr. Dodman. – Center for Canine Behavior Studies – www.drdodman.org

 

 

 

 

Title: Reasons to See the Vet if your Dog Suffers Nighttime Anxiety & Why Cats Suck on Clothing.