In line with my main hypothesis, this study revealed that shelter dog exposed to nature sound enrichment show less locomotor behaviour than dogs exposed to pink noise enrichment. Interestingly, this effect seemed to vary depending on the time of day.
The results from this study show promising outcomes and highlights the need for further research on long-term exposure to sound enrichment on shelter dogs.
Resting behaviours
Interestingly it seems like the nature sound dogs increased laying down with their head resting during treatment when the pink noise dogs decrease the behaviour. This in combination with the results for laying down, alert, where dogs exposed to nature sound show more of this behaviour than dogs exposed to pink noise both in the morning and in the afternoon.
The present study revealed that even though both groups spend a great proportion of their time relaxing the dogs exposed to nature sound relaxed more than dogs exposed to pink noise. This suggests that nature sound has a similar effect as reported in previous research, where dogs showed increased resting behaviour when exposed to classical music.
Active behaviours and proximity to gate
Previous research has shown that dogs can become more active when exposed to certain sounds such as heavy metal music. Even though the results from this study is not significant it reveals the need to look further in to sound enrichments effect on activity in shelter dogs.
Previous research has showed that the more activity in the corridor the more time dogs will spend in proximity to gate. So the different effect in the morning and afternoon is probably due to the daily routine of the shelter similar to the effect on the resting behaviour. This result in combination with the trend for pink noise dogs showing more active behaviours overall may not then reveal an increase in active behaviour but a lack of effect on the behaviours of shelter dogs. This since dogs exposed to pink noise behave more similar to that of kennelled dogs.
Time spent outside
Previous research has shown that dogs living in a shelter environment has a tendency to run outside to investigate other dogs barking. This was observed in my study but not quantified. So it may be that the effect of the pink noise treatment with dogs spending more time outside overall spilled over to the nature sound group.
