Hearing is the sense dogs are second-best at — well behind smell, comfortably ahead of vision. And the gap between their hearing and ours explains a surprising number of household mysteries.
The frequency range
Humans: roughly 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, with the upper limit falling steadily from childhood. Most adults over forty top out somewhere around 15,000 Hz.
Dogs: roughly 40 Hz to 45,000 Hz, with some sources putting the upper limit as high as 60,000 Hz.
So dogs hear a whole octave and more above our ceiling. They are slightly worse at the very lowest frequencies, which is why a deep rumble is one of the few things we notice first.
That upper range is where a great deal of the modern world lives: the whine of a switched-mode power supply, the flyback in an old television, ultrasonic motion sensors, some LED drivers, and certain pest repellers.
Why this matters at home
A dog who seems inexplicably unsettled in one room may be hearing something you cannot.
Candidates:
- Phone chargers and power adaptors, which often emit a high whine
- Ultrasonic pest repellers, which are specifically designed to be aversive to animals
- Some smoke alarms in low-battery mode, chirping at a frequency and interval that is genuinely distressing
- Electronic equipment on standby
- Plumbing and boilers
- Bats, mice and insects in walls and lofts
If a dog avoids a room, or stares at a wall, it is worth turning things off one at a time.
Locating sound
Dogs also localise sound better than we do. They have around eighteen muscles controlling each ear, allowing independent movement and fine-tuning, and the mobile pinna funnels sound and helps determine direction.
Dogs can detect the source of a sound with considerable precision, and a dog with erect ears typically does this better than one with heavy dropped ears — which is part of why many hunting and working breeds have upright ears.
Dogs can also hear sounds roughly four times further away than we can, depending on conditions.
Puppies are born deaf
The ear canals of newborn puppies are closed and do not open until around two to three weeks of age. Hearing then develops rapidly, and puppies are startled by sounds that will later be unremarkable.
This is why sound socialisation in the first sixteen weeks matters so much. Recordings of traffic, fireworks, vacuum cleaners, doorbells and household noise — played quietly and paired with good things — build a dog who finds the world unremarkable later.
Deafness
Congenital deafness is linked to coat pigmentation genes, particularly the piebald and merle genes. Dalmatians, English Setters, Australian Shepherds, Catahoulas and white Boxers are among the higher-risk breeds, and double-merle dogs — the product of breeding two merles together — frequently have severe hearing and vision defects.
BAER testing (brainstem auditory evoked response) can identify deafness in puppies from about five weeks, including deafness in only one ear, which owners almost never detect on their own.
Acquired deafness comes with age, chronic ear infections, some medications, and loud noise exposure.
Signs: sleeping through noise that used to wake them, not responding to their name from behind, startling when touched, becoming harder to recall, and increased barking (partly because they cannot hear themselves).
Living with a deaf dog
Deaf dogs do remarkably well, and much of the adaptation is on the owner’s side:
- Hand signals for everything. Dogs are excellent at reading gesture; many trainers find deaf dogs learn visual cues faster than hearing dogs learn verbal ones
- A vibration collar — not a shock collar — as an attention cue, conditioned to mean “look at me, something good is coming”
- A torch flash at night for recall in the garden
- Foot stamping on wooden floors, which carries as vibration
- Wake them gently, with a hand placed on the shoulder and a moment to orient. Never startle a sleeping deaf dog
- A lead or a securely fenced area, always. A deaf dog cannot hear traffic or a recall
- A tag saying the dog is deaf, which helps if they are ever lost
Protecting the hearing your dog has
- Do not expose dogs to gunfire, motorsport or loud music without protection
- Treat ear infections properly; chronic untreated disease damages hearing permanently
- Manage noise fear early, because a dog who is frightened of noise is in distress whether or not their hearing is affected
- Be thoughtful with ultrasonic devices — anti-bark collars and pest repellers work by being unpleasant at frequencies your dog cannot escape
And the dog whistle
It works because it sits above our hearing range and inside theirs — typically somewhere between 23,000 and 54,000 Hz for the silent versions.
The advantages are practical: it carries further than a voice, it sounds identical every time regardless of whether you are calm or furious, and it is not drowned by wind. The consistency is probably the most underrated part, because a recall cue that always sounds the same is a recall cue a dog can trust.
