"I have had several interesting encounters playing music for animals.

In the summer before I started my Music Therapy training, I was doing a gig
with a rock band near Sechelt on the Sunshine coast of BC. During some free
time, the drummer and I walked down to the ocean shore which was right
outside our hotel. He brought some bongos with him and I gathered a variety
of pieces of driftwood and rocks to create my own natural percussion
instruments. My friend and I got carried away and had a percussion jam for
about two hours. For most of the last hour, a raven approached our space and
paraded back and forth in a wide semicircle. He didn't leave until we
finished playing.

Since then, The Raven has become a very important spiritual symbol for me.
There are many variations of an ancient native story about how the Raven
returns "the light" to the world.

A year after my raven encounter, A friends boxer had a litter of nine pups,
eight which survived. She chose one of those pups, named Jazz, to keep in
her home with the mother. When Jazz was about 2 weeks old, I was practicing
a lovely concerto by Vivaldi on my classical guitar. Jazz came and sat
between my legs and howled at the sky while I played...

Finally, this year, I have had the opportunity to stroll along some rural
roads near my home where there are plenty of horses, a few cows and even
some llamas who live on the farms. My daughter and I have found that many of
the horses will come right up to us as we sing and play recorder and
ukulele. One in particular, seems very taken by the music and nuzzled us..."

Jim

==================

"...when my
beloved cat was sick and spending a couple of nights
(over a weekend) in the animal hospital. Knowing that
she would be scared, I asked the powers that be if I
could come in over the weekend and spend some time
with her. They agreed and when I arrived I, of
course, sang to her while I pet and held her. Well,
of course she settled totally (she had a lot of music
at home), but the extraordinary thing was that all the
cat and dog racket in the kennel area stopped also.
This continued on for quite some time and the place
continued to be quiet as I left. True to form, I
received a request from the vet's office for 'taped'
music, since they had heard of the success of my
singing from the weekend attendant. That just sounded
too familiar to me from my hospital music therapy
practice...Of course, the live human voice cannot be
replaced by a radio...they did not get the same
response from recorded music. Though I hear that
cows who listen to Mozart not only produce more milk,
but score higher in math than cows who don't!!!! (tee hee)"

Theresa  

=================

"Further to music and animals, I thought to myself.....Hmmm.....should I tell
this story or not? I think I should....

I was at the Greater Vancouver Zoo about a year and a half ago, and it was a
cold and rainy day. Some of the animals were outside, so we visited
them....others were in their sheltered areas. We visited the tigers, the
little water deers, and the camels. The emus were really friendly....too
friendly....with my partner, Daryl, sticking their long necks through the
fence to try and stick their beaks in his coat pocket....must have had some
emu food in there.

We happened upon the hippopotamus area, and there we saw two hippopotami.
One looked fairly nonchalant, going about his hippo business, but the other
had a large growth extending from his posterior, and he seemed so unhappy.
"You should sing to him," said Daryl. "OK," I said. I began to gently hum
"Hush little baby don't say a word" to the hippo. The hippo turned and
looked at me in his forlorn way, and seemed to be standing there, listening.
We were quite amazed, as he really did seem to be paying attention,
looking right at me as I hummed softly. I stopped for a bit, and he started
to move toward his big hippo house. Just to see what would happen, and
still wanting to somehow bring him some comfort, I began to hum again. Sure
enough, he stopped walking towards his house, and turned to face me. He
just stood there and seemed to take it in.

I'm not sure if it brought him comfort or not, but he stayed and listened
until I was finished. When I stopped, he turned and headed into his hippo
house. I think animals, just like us, sense tenderness and feel and hear
the vibrations of music. They, too, start off with the sound of mama's
heartbeat, and are used to nonverbal communication!

It was a special experience for me, singing to this hippo, and I'm sure he
felt it too!! So, next time you're at the zoo, give it a try -- or sing to
your kittie and see what happens! You've heard of stopping to smell the
roses? Well, how 'bout singing to the hippos! (Gently, though....no
jigs!!)"

 
Chantal Jolly

==========================

"In response to the article about playing fiddle for the traumatized
animals of Kamloops area [reference to the fires of Summer 2003]:

We sometimes travel to Metchosin to shovel goat manure from a barn, to
feed an organic venture we are developing at home. One of these visits
occurred right before my 7 year old son was to play his violin in a
concert in Victoria. With permission of the owner, I suggested he
'warm-up' in the adjacent barn, (as there would be no other opportunity
that day), where a group of ducks, ducklings, chickens and chicks, goats,
and a goose were hanging out.
We were surprised and delighted at the response of the animals. With the
first strains of the violin, all the animals ceased their chatter and
became silent, and the goat migrated closer to my son. It was as though a
great stillness came over the life of the barn, to be broken as soon as my
son finished playing.
Some weeks later, I took my flute to see what would happen. The animals
were far less affected by this sound, and maybe a little disturbed --It
was definitely less enjoyable than the violin had been for them.

Perhaps this is neither here nor there to most MT's out there - I find it
a lovely variation on the theme of lending a helping hand to humanity, and
thus decided to 'share'. A little snippet of life that is worth
remembering, for us..."

Mary 

=========================

"Hi; In reading all these wonderful stories about music and animals, I would
like to share my experience with cows. I am not a music therapist, a
professional musician, but a singer and fiddler who began quite shyly.

In single motherhood years I worked as a dairy herds-woman. The early morning
milking began at 5:00am and I worked alone. The acousitcs in the milking
parlour were excellent and I could be assured there were no other people around
at that time of day, so I began practicing singing while I milked the cows.
Such songs as "Magnolia", Bonnie Raitte's "You," "Summertime," and other
soleful songs I was able to belt out with all my heart, while washing, milking,
feeding and releasing the cows four at a time on each of two sides of the
parlour.

My job as a milker included bringing up the less enthusiastic cows, and
cleaning the parlour after milking. About a month after I began singing to the
cows, I realized that I hadn't had to bring any cows in, they'd all come in on
their own, that the two cows who were notoriously stubborn and difficult had
settled down were now calm and cooperative, and the biggest bonus at all, that
there had been not one scrap of manure to clean out of the parlour. Not one
cow pooped during milking for a month!

I continued to sing in the parlour for the next two years I worked there and in
all that time, not one cow pooped in the parlour. Ever. Not even the new
young heifers being milked for the first time. While the farm owner was
sceptical, even he had to admit that milk production was up, and illness was
down. And I got to be a much more confident singer. When I trained my
replacement, I assured her that the cows expect to be sung to. The symbiosis
of animal care is really a beautiful thing."

Janet