#124 - Try It: How to Use Sound Enrichment Without Regretting It Immediately

Sound enrichment is often touted as a magic solution for everything from masking triggers to helping pets chill out—but what happens when the “soothing” soundscape turns into sensory overload for you? In this episode of Enrichment for the Real World, Ellen Yoakum, Pet Harmony co-owner, behavior consultant, and proud sound-sensitive human, gets candid about the not-so-talked-about side of enrichment: what to do when your pet’s needs and your own don’t match.

You’ll hear real-life stories, mistakes to avoid (spoiler: not all white noise is created equal), and a step-by-step approach to testing sound options that won’t make you want to throw your speakers out the window. Whether you’re neurodivergent, easily overstimulated, or just someone who really values a quiet house, this episode gives you practical ways to navigate the noise—without sacrificing your sanity or your pet’s wellbeing.

Because enrichment isn’t about trading your discomfort for your pet’s comfort. It’s about finding solutions that work for everyone. 

TLDL (too long, didn’t listen): 3 Key Takeaways 

1️⃣ Sound enrichment is personal – Don’t just copy what you see online; test what works for your ears and your pet’s comfort.

2️⃣ Start with what feels manageable – Consider your own sound preferences and experiment with those before trying anything new.

3️⃣ Find middle ground – When your needs and your pet’s don’t match, use creative solutions or professional guidance to make it work for both of you.

For the full episode show notes, including additional resources, join us here.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Ellen: Now, some common mistakes that I see people do or I work with clients to try to avoid is taking other people's, sound enrichment and sound masking and sound auditory stuff and thinking it will work for you. You are different individuals with different environments and different sources and different preferences, and so it's okay to get inspiration from other people, but make sure to test it for yourself and then it's okay if it doesn't work . It really, really needs to work for you. It does not matter how many times somebody tells you white noise is the magic answer on the internet. If you are somebody who cannot handle white noise, and I am one of those people, it's not gonna be effective for you.

[00:00:39] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:00:57] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:00:58] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

[00:01:19] Ellen: All right. Today we're gonna talk about how to use sound enrichment without regretting it immediately. And you may have noticed that the voice coming through the speaker isn't from who you would've expected for a little background. Hi, I'm Ellen. I'm one of the co-owners and behavior consultants with Pet Harmony, and I'm also one of the most sensory avoidant members of our team, which means like many of our clients, I've tried auditory related enrichment and immediately regretted it.

This episode may not be for everybody. It may speak to a very specific subset of our audience, but whether or not you are a sensory avoidant individual or you are sensory seeking, there are gonna be some things that are going to help you find sound masking that works for you as well as your pet. And if you're a fellow behavior consultant, you'll pick up some tips and some questions that will help you find something that will be effective for your clients.

Because remember, enrichment is about increasing welfare and wellbeing for everyone. Our goal is not to trade stress and misery and overstimulation. Okay. So sound enrichment is a really common recommendation to help with a number of things, whether it is for actual sound masking, and by that I mean layering sound in the environment to reduce the perception of a target sound, or we are looking for something that can facilitate relaxation in our pet or a mix of the two or something else entirely. Sound can be a really effective tool for a number of different goals. I'm gonna link to a couple of episodes in the show notes that are focused around sound masking and sound preference testing for our pets, so you can always learn more there.

That being said, it's important to remember that sound doesn't just impact our pets. It's also likely to impact us. I remember years ago I was watching a consulting session with Emily and she was talking about how in their current environment, this was very long time ago in their house, one of the sounds that her dogs were most reactive to were the sounds of voices outside.

And so she found that Cartoon Network was incredibly effective at masking or reducing the perception. And thus the reactivity from her dogs to the voices outside because there's so much variability in the way that cartoons talk and there's so much noise happening. And I remember thinking that might be effective for Griffey.

And also if I had to listen to Cartoon Network all day every day. I would be the reactive one in the family, and that is not the goal that we have for one another. So finding something that works for you and your. Pet dog, cat, bird, whatever it happens to be is really important.

When I'm working with clients, the first thing I ask them to do is think about what are some things that are comfortable for them to have on in the background?

And if you are somebody who really likes quiet, I know that this can be a really hard question because you may have not trialed this yet, so we're gonna get curious. We're gonna do little experiments and see how we respond to these different noises. It might be that you already have a suite of things that you could have on in the background for a long amount of time, think four to six hours. It might be that you already know that some things you really like to have on when you're in a certain physiological state or emotional state. Or during different types of work. If you work from home, maybe your deep work, that focus work, the I have to have all eyes and all attention on this thing is going to allow for a different subset of sounds than some other things.

We just sit and we think about these things. What works for us? What do we already know does not work for us. If you already know, like me, that white noise is terrible for you, then we're not gonna put white noise on one of the things to try with your dog. That's not fair to you. We're not doing that.

So we think what do we know already overstimulates us? What do we already know? We find aversive. What do we already know? We find relaxing or comforting or comfortable. It may not be comforting, but we might be very comfortable having it in the background. We wanna think about the things we've already experienced, what worked, what didn't.

So just sit and have a think for a couple of minutes about things that you turn on often or things you turn off often. Write 'em down if that is going to be helpful for you. The next thing I tell clients to do is to trial those sounds in the place they think they're going to use it. So if you are new to this journey and you don't know what you're hoping to use this enrichment for your pet for yet, then just put it in a couple of different places and see what the result is as you live your life.

So pick one of those sounds. For me, if I was doing this when I did do this, 'cause I went through this, I do most of the exercises I ask my clients to do myself iRead sounds of the rainforest, one because I obviously like animals and so I enjoy the background of different animals. The sound of rain is very soothing to me. There's a lot in there that was effective, um, that I could listen to often, and I didn't think that there would be anything in there that would be hard for my dogs to hear. So, I put sounds of the rainforest on and I tried it on a couple of different sound sources, in a couple of different locations, during a couple of different activities, or states, or things happening in my life. So I tried it on my cell phone, I tried it through a Bluetooth speaker, I tried it through my TV speakers, it might've been all I did because I don't have that many sound sources. And then I also tried it with different distances, number of walls between us, door closed, door open.

And then I tried it during different things that I needed to do for myself. So I tried it during a consultation. If I had it on the background in the living room, was that distracting during a consultation? Can I focus with this? Is this something that really needs to be when I'm not trying to think deeply?

And then check in with yourself. How was that? Do you find that you were overstimulated? Are you having a hard time? Are you having a stress response? Was that too much for you? Was that comfortable? Did you find that it, in fact, helped you? I know a lot of folks in my life turn on like lo-fi when they need to focus because it helps them to pay attention and really zoom in on what is going on.

Or I have a number of folks that turn on their comfort shows in the background. So check in with yourself. Was this helpful? Do you feel that it was something that you could do repeatedly over and over again? Or do we need to go back to the drawing board and find additional sounds? I usually tell people to look for like three to five, that they could rotate out because we may change. We're not getting a really robust data set in this, so we wanna make sure that we have a couple of different options.

Once we have those options and we know what works and what doesn't under different situations, then we're gonna go and test them with our dog. I usually break these two things up 'cause this is a lot of information to be collecting all at once.

If. You are already skilled in this activity. You can do them both simultaneously and congratulations, but it's also okay to break them into two separate exercises and I will link to how to do a sound preference test with our dogs so that you get a more in depth look at what that looks like for them, depending on what your goal is.

Now, some common mistakes that I see people do or I work with clients to try to avoid is taking other people's sound enrichment, and sound masking, and sound auditory stuff, and thinking it will work for you. You are different individuals with different environments and different sources and different preferences, and so it's okay to get inspiration from other people, but make sure to test it for yourself and then it's okay if it doesn't work. In my house, i've talked about this many times in many places, my partner and I tend to pair Julien Solomita so on Twitch or YouTube with relaxation, that is something we put on when we are relaxing, which means it is very relaxing for us, now even when we're stressed and it's very effective at helping our dogs relax.

The other thing that's really important is to remember again. It really, really needs to work for you. It does not matter how many times somebody tells you white noise is the magic answer on the internet. If you are somebody who cannot handle white noise, and I am one of those people, it's not gonna be effective for you.

The other thing I want you to remember is to not get hung up on perfection for you or your pet. So if you are trying things and you're like, I couldn't have this on for forever, this would, I don't know, I just have to get out and leave my house. I couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle this. I'd wanna fight everybody in my family all the time. That's how I found out I didn't like white noise. If there isn't a single audio source that you can listen to all day, every day, that is fine.

I couldn't do that. Not a single thing. I get overstimulated by the sound of the electricity in the house, and I use it to like do things like make this podcast.

So look for things that at a minimum aren't overstimulating for you, but even better if you can find either some comfort, or relief, or gain something positive from it. If it helps you to focus.

And if you find that you and your pet's needs are at odds. Then remember, it's okay to accommodate yourself. Sometimes Griffin needs something that's a little more intense than I can handle for the place that I am in that day, and that means that it's a great time for me to pull out my sound, dampening earplugs.

He can have what he needs, I can get what I need. If we can all find that middle ground on that day, and then maybe tomorrow we'll be better in alignment. And if you and your pet find yourself trading stress and misery, so it's either, their comfort or your comfort. I suggest finding a behavior consultant that can help you shape your pet's comfort in the direction of things that will also work for you.

We can teach effective sound masking. We can teach effective sound for relaxation. We can teach effective sound enrichment. You just may need a little of extra support.

 If you find yourself doing this activity for either yourself or with your dog, we'd love to hear about it, tag us at Pet Harmony Training on Instagram. All right. Here's to harmony.

[00:11:10] Allie: I hope you enjoy today's episode and if there's someone in your life who also needs to hear this, be sure to text it to them right now. If you're a pet parent looking for more tips on enrichment, behavior modification, and finding harmony with your pet, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Harmony training. If you're a behavior or training professional dedicated to enrichment for yourself, your clients, and their pets, check us out on TikTok and Instagram at Pet Harmony Pro.

As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes. Thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode and making us sound good. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixa Bay. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps more pet lovers and professionals find us so they can bring enrichment into their world too.

Thank you for listening, and here's to harmony.