From Bach to The Beatles, 12-year-old’s music therapy for homeless dogs is a hit in the US

It is often said that music is the universal language of humanity. Now, a 12-year-old boy in Houston, in the US state of Texas, is putting that to the test for an unlikely audience: man’s best friend. Yuvi Agarwal started playing keyboard when he was four years old. Several years ago, he noticed his playing soothed his family’s restless golden doodle, Bozo. He wondered if it could also help stressed homeless animals. With help from his parents, who both have backgrounds in marketing, he founded the non-profit organisation Wild Tunes in 2023 to recruit musicians to play in animal shelters. So far he has enlisted about 100 volunteer musicians and singers of all ages and abilities to perform at nine shelters in Houston, New Jersey and Denver, Colorado. “You don’t have to understand the lyrics to enjoy the music,” Agarwal says after playing hits such as The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect” on his portable keyboard at the Denver Animal Shelter. “Just enjoy the melody, the harmony and the rhythms. So it transcends linguistic barriers, and it can even transcend species.” Agarwal, who played for an elderly miniature poodle named Pituca – a Spanish slang word sometimes used to describe a snob – says many of his four-legged listeners, which also include cats, become excited when he enters their kennel. But after a few minutes of playing, they calm down. Some even go to sleep. He remembers a rescue dog named Penelope who refused to come out of her enclosure in Houston to be fed. “Within a short period of me playing, she went from not even coming out of her kennel to licking me all over my face and nibbling my ears,” Agarwal says. A few stalls down from where he was jamming on his keyboard at the Denver shelter, volunteer Sarah McDonner played Mozart and Bach on her flute for Max, a one-year-old stray boxer who tilted his head when she hit the high notes. “The animals having that human interaction in a positive way, I think, gives them something to look forward to, something that is different throughout their day,” says McDonner, a professional musician who met Agarwal in Houston. She helped bring the programme to Colorado after moving to Denver a few months ago. “I think it’s very important to give them something different from what they’re used to in their tiny cages … and it makes them more adoptable in the long run,” McDonner adds. While the effect of music on humans has been studied extensively, its role in animal behaviour remains unclear. Several studies suggest that classical music generally has a calming influence on dogs in stressful environments like kennels, shelters and veterinary clinics. But some researchers warn there is not enough data to support the claim. “We always want these really simplistic answers, so we want to say that music calms animals, for example, and I think that it’s much more nuanced than that,” says Lori Kogan, a self-described “dog-person” who chairs the human-animal interaction section of the American Psychological Association. “There’s a lot more research that needs to happen before I think that we can unequivocally say that music is a great thing for animals.” Kogan, a professor and researcher at Colorado State University, has studied how animals and humans get along for more than two decades. Research involving the effect of music on dogs often produces mixed results, she says, because there are so many variables: the setting, the volume, the type and tempo of the music, and the breed of the dog and its previous exposure to music. She suggests a case-by-case approach to introducing animals to music. “If you play music for your pet and they seem to like it and they appear calmer, then I think we can say that that’s a positive thing, that you’re providing some level of enrichment for that pet … I would encourage people to give it a try and to see how their pets respond,” she says. Agarwal takes his experience at shelters as undeniable evidence that music helps comfort stressed animals, and he plans to grow Wild Tunes into a nationwide programme. The volunteers get something out of it too, he says. “You get a really great way to practise your instrument or sing in front of a non-judgemental audience, which can boost your confidence,” he says.

From Bach to The Beatles, 12-year-old’s music therapy for homeless dogs is a hit in the US

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}With a bit of help from his parents, Yuvi Agarwal set up Wild Tunes, which enlists musicians to comfort animals in shelters across the US

With a bit of help from his parents, Yuvi Agarwal set up Wild Tunes, which enlists musicians to comfort animals in shelters across the US