# High pitched noise upsetting our dog



## _simon_ (Nov 27, 2007)

This started on Sunday (28th) in the evening about 6pm ish. Our lab came running out of the kitchen twitching his head around looking into the air as though he could hear something that was scaring him. He ended up cowering in my arms physically shaking. This went on for a few hours. We did the obvious and checked his ears with a torch in case there was a bug or something in there and turned off all the electronics in the house including fridge and freezer in case something was faulty. No joy and he carried on the behaviour until he finally put himself to bed around 8pm.

Monday 29th - fine all morning inside and outside with me. I'm outside in the garden with him in the evening playing, one of the neighbours takes their dog for a walk passing our garden gate and the dogs have a brief bit of barking at each other and then again our lab starts acting as though he can hear something and is scared and at the same time my ears start hurting. Our lab wants to go back in the house and the behaviour continues as does the pain in my ears. This was around 6 - 7pm ish, I didn't check the time so can't be 100% on the time. He seemed to calm down around 8pm again.

Wondering if one of the neighbours is doing this on purpose with some sort of device because they don't like dogs barking I ask the neighbour we're joined to how their dog is but theirs is acting normally. They did a bit of googling and came to the same conclusion that it sounded like someone might be pointing a device to stop dogs barking in our direction. Now, our lab very rarely barks but we do have a neighbour just across a small alleyway from us whose dog barks the entire time it's outside. The neighbour I was talking to has suggested we start taking note of the time it happens if it continues and then contacting environmental health, however as far as I'm aware if it is one of these devices, they won't be able to do anything as they're not illegal to buy or use. 

Has anyone come across anything like this situation or has any thoughts? Will our lab get used to the noise?


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## Zincubus (Sep 6, 2010)

_simon_ said:


> This started on Sunday (28th) in the evening about 6pm ish. Our lab came running out of the kitchen twitching his head around looking into the air as though he could hear something that was scaring him. He ended up cowering in my arms physically shaking. This went on for a few hours. We did the obvious and checked his ears with a torch in case there was a bug or something in there and turned off all the electronics in the house including fridge and freezer in case something was faulty. No joy and he carried on the behaviour until he finally put himself to bed around 8pm.
> 
> Monday 29th - fine all morning inside and outside with me. I'm outside in the garden with him in the evening playing, one of the neighbours takes their dog for a walk passing our garden gate and the dogs have a brief bit of barking at each other and then again our lab starts acting as though he can hear something and is scared and at the same time my ears start hurting. Our lab wants to go back in the house and the behaviour continues as does the pain in my ears. This was around 6 - 7pm ish, I didn't check the time so can't be 100% on the time. He seemed to calm down around 8pm again.
> 
> ...


Sounds like it's time to get your biggest , boomiest ( if that's a word ) speakers set up , open the windows when your dog is acting weird and then reach for the Metallica CD ....... Enter Sandman should work ... Sorry I've nothing constructive to offer but good luck . Our tiny Italian " miniature Greyhound goes bonkers when I set the smoke alarm off ( when cooking usually ) and that's distressing enough for everyone . Presumably this noise is even more unpleasant for your poor dog to endure


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## feorag (Jul 31, 2007)

I think keeping a diary is a great idea, so you can try and pinpoint the times it's happening. 

What you do after that I honestly don't know, apart from the fact that you said it was hurting your ears too. Maybe you could use that as a reason for approaching environmental health. Do any of your immediate neighbours have young children, because my understanding is that often young children have higher pitched hearing and can hear these animal scaring devices.

The young girl I used to look after found the high power Dyson hand dryers in lady's toilets really hurt her ears.


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## CloudForest (Nov 27, 2013)

do you have a microphone of some kind? or a recorder on your phone, anything that can record really.....next time it happens, go outside and slowly wave the mic/phone around while recording for a few mins, then drop me a message...I'm a sound engineer, and I'll be able to tell you very quickly if there are ultrasonic sounds being sent into your garden (sometimes doesn't work, depends on the microphone and the frequency), but worth a shot...


(if you have any options in your recording app/program, set it to WAV - Uncompressed, if you do it on a computer/laptop, then I recommend using Audacity, its free)


another option is to use a Bat Detector with a sweepable freq...if you know anyone who likes looking for bats lol


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## _simon_ (Nov 27, 2007)

I'll see what I can do about a recording. It happened again tonight. Going by his reactions it was briefly for a few minutes at bang on 5:30 and then from 5:50 for about 2 hours.


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## CloudForest (Nov 27, 2013)

_simon_ said:


> I'll see what I can do about a recording. It happened again tonight. Going by his reactions it was briefly for a few minutes at bang on 5:30 and then from 5:50 for about 2 hours.


was he barking before it happened?

you don't have any Fracking/Exploration going on near by do you? have heard of dogs going nuts while that's going on sumtimes, same way they sumtimes do before/during an earthquake


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## _simon_ (Nov 27, 2007)

He wasn't barking, no. Checked online and no fracking going on near us.


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## _simon_ (Nov 27, 2007)

Today has been much worse, it started before lunch and lasted until about 6pm. My Mrs noticed it seemed to be worse around where she sits so she unplugged her phone and tablet chargers - we forgot to turn those off the other day when we turned everything else off and since then he's been completely normal. Now that doesn't explain why it happened outside the other day unless it made his hearing very sensitive and the other dog barking hurt him. We'll see how he is tomorrow, she's going to leave them both unplugged.

I've downloaded an app on my phone called Hertz which records wav files however it asks for a sampling rate and I don't know what to use. It defaults to 8000 and I have made a recording as such indoors when he was acting as though he could hear something that frightened him so if that's any good then pm me your email address and I'll send it across. 

The supported sampling rates are:

8000
11025
16000
22050
44100

I've also emailed Environmental Health with what's been going on to see if they can help in any way.


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## CloudForest (Nov 27, 2013)

ah sample rate is an issue actually, you need to be able to record at higher rate, 44100 will only record upto 22.05khz, dog whistles tend to be higher freq than that....see if you can 96000 (96khz sample rate)...but I recon your phone hardware is probably the limiting factor...

will drop you a pm and see if i can dig out some better info tomorrow


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## _simon_ (Nov 27, 2007)

No problems whatsoever yesterday so it's possibly the chargers my mrs unplugged. They're official samsung chargers but she did have one replaced due to it squealing. Something I forgot about that did reoccur yesterday though was phantom drilling. This is exactly what it sounds like... a drilling sound that appears to have no origin. It's loudest in the centre of the lounge when standing up. I've put my ear to the walls, the floor and stood outside and cannot find a source. Comes and goes at random and started a few weeks before Christmas, when it happens it lasts for 5 - 10 minutes at a time.


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## _simon_ (Nov 27, 2007)

Again no problems yesterday either. Hopefully it's gone for good whatever it was.


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## Zincubus (Sep 6, 2010)

_simon_ said:


> Again no problems yesterday either. Hopefully it's gone for good whatever it was.


This is a long shot but as the sound has stopped just when everyone has pulled their Xmas decorations down ...could there be a link maybe ? Many of those outside decorations have a power box ( a name I just made up ) but they have some kind of electrical box between the lights and the mains plug .. Maybe one of the neighbours systems was sending out a high pitch frequency of some kind ?


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## _simon_ (Nov 27, 2007)

I'm doubtful to be honest as it only started on the 28th. He's fine so far again tonight but has been a bit jumpy at various noises today which isn't like him. It's like when he experienced his first fire works, he was fearful of every noise and light in the night sky for a while. I've been playing with him more to hopefully take his mind of whatever has been going on.


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## PPVallhunds (May 23, 2010)

_simon_ said:


> No problems whatsoever yesterday so it's possibly the chargers my mrs unplugged. They're official samsung chargers but she did have one replaced due to it squealing. Something I forgot about that did reoccur yesterday though was phantom drilling. This is exactly what it sounds like... a drilling sound that appears to have no origin. It's loudest in the centre of the lounge when standing up. I've put my ear to the walls, the floor and stood outside and cannot find a source. Comes and goes at random and started a few weeks before Christmas, when it happens it lasts for 5 - 10 minutes at a time.


my friends phone charge went nuts the other day while she was up mine, it was making crackeling noises so I unplugged it and it carried on making the noises!


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