Thinking about how certain sound frequencies encourage calmness, or sleep, or relieving anxiety in humans… is there research for horses?
Music for your Horse | Equine Wellness Magazine
There are likely other studies, but this is one I know of.
A former client used to play music specifically designed to calm horses. It was slower classical. I am not sure where she found it…maybe Spotify?
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One summer, there was a dude practicing bagpipes down in the main park parking lot. He may have been from the pipe band at the firehall near by. There used to be a big tradition of police and firemen having bagpipe bands in Canada, outgrowth of the veterans pipe bands after ww 1 and 2. Parades were full of them in the 1960s. Even my undergrad university has a pipe band that plays at convocation. Anyhow I digress, but random bagpipes are not totally wierd in Canada.
All the horses ignored it except the Standardbred ex harness racer gelded late. He got fascinated and all puffed up.
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Bagpipe tangent. The RCMP had a horse wash out of the musical ride soley because he couldn’t stand during the bagpipe portion of the performance.
A fellow boarder once brought bagpipes out and practiced behind the barn. I have photos of the horses going and staring with varying degrees of fascination or concern.
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I know every horse I have had LOVED the sound of Rush Limbaugh’s voice. Also the narrator John Lee (audio books) and Sir Derick Jacoby. They liked voices more than music.
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So does music per se influence horses or does it just provide a white noise blocking out potentially alarming sounds? Also a typical radio station alternated violently between hyped up voices and different kinds of music.
Has anyone done music with actual heart rate and breath monitoring or just observation?
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Thanks all… what I was mostly looking for is research on the effect of specific frequencies re: anxiety, calmness, etc. There are human studies on binaural beats which led me to this question.
Interesting that neither study described the type of music. “classical” can be Vivaldi or the William Tell Overture…
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I know some people who do stuff with tuning forks and horses, but I don’t know if there have been any studies behind that. Maybe that is something you could add to your search?
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I had one horse who could hear and distinguish the unwrapping of a peppermint from at least at 500 feet, if the wind was right 1,000 feet
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There is a classical dressage trainer in NJ who uses music of specific frequencies to relax horses. I checked out her website but couldn’t find anyting about it but a friend audited a clinic with her and now uses it with her horses.
And her name is???
All I find is sales for her courses.
There isn’t anything anywhere on her website that mentions the music. As I mentioned my friend audited a clinic and she talked about it there. I’m not really in touch with her anymore but if I see her at the barn I’ll ask her. It could be the same frequency music for healing/relaxing that you can find on YouTube; maybe it has the same effect on horses as people.
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