Volunteers use the universal language of music to soothe stressed
shelter animals
[June 25, 2025]
By THOMAS PEIPERT
DENVER (AP) — It's often said music is the universal language of
humanity. Now a 12-year-old Houston boy is putting that to the test
among an unlikely audience — man's best friend.
Yuvi Agarwal started playing keyboard when he was 4 and several years
ago noticed his playing soothed his family's restless golden doodle,
Bozo. He grew curious if it also could help stressed homeless animals.
With help from his parents, who both have backgrounds in marketing, he
founded the nonprofit Wild Tunes in 2023 to recruit musicians to play in
animal shelters. So far he has enlisted about 100 volunteer musicians
and singers of all ages and abilities to perform at nine shelters in
Houston, New Jersey and Denver.
“You don’t have to understand the lyrics to enjoy the music. Just enjoy
the melody, the harmony and the rhythms. So it transcends linguistic
barriers, and even it can just transcend species,” Agarwal said recently
after playing hits like The Beatles' “Hey Jude” and Ed Sheeran's
“Perfect” on his portable keyboard at the Denver Animal Shelter.
Agarwal, who was playing for an elderly miniature poodle named Pituca —
Spanish slang sometimes used to describe a snob — said many of his
four-legged listeners, which include cats, become excited when he enters
their kennel. But after a few minutes of playing, they calm down. Some
even go to sleep.
He remembers a rescue dog named Penelope that refused to come out of her
enclosure in Houston to be fed.
“Within a short period of me playing, she went from not even coming out
of her kennel to licking me all over my face and nibbling my ears,”
Agarwal said.
A few stalls down from where he was jamming on his keyboard at the
Denver shelter, volunteer Sarah McDonner played Mozart and Bach on her
flute for Max, a 1-year-old stray boxer that tilted his head when she
hit the high notes.
“The animals having that human interaction in a positive way, I think,
gives them something to look forward to, something that is different
throughout their day,” said McDonner, a professional musician who met
Argawal in Houston.
She helped bring the program to Colorado after moving to Denver a few
months ago. “I think it’s very important to give them something
different from what they’re used to in their little tiny cages ... and
makes them more adoptable in the long run,” McDonner said.
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Yuvi Agarwal, the founder of Wild Tunes, which aims to soothe
stressed shelter animals with live music, plays the keyboard at the
Denver Animal Shelter, on Friday, May 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas
Peipert)
While the effect of music on humans has been studied extensively,
its role in animal behavior remains murky.
Several studies suggest that classical music generally has a calming
influence on dogs in stressful environments like kennels, shelters
and veterinary clinics. But some researchers warn there is not
enough data to support the claim.
“We always want these really simplistic answers. So we want to say
that music calms animals, for example, and I think that it’s much
more nuanced than that,” said Lori Kogan, a self-described
“dog-person" who chairs the human-animal interaction section of the
American Psychological Association. “There’s a lot more research
that needs to happen before I think that we can unequivocally say
that music is a great thing for animals."
Kogan, a professor and researcher at Colorado State University, has
studied for more than two decades how animals and humans get along.
Research involving the effect of music on dogs often produces mixed
results, she said, because there are so many variables: the setting;
the volume, type and tempo of the music and the breed of the dog and
its previous exposure to music.
She suggests a case-by-case approach to introducing music to
animals.
“If you play music for your pet, and they seem to like it and they
appear calmer, then I think we can say that that’s a positive thing,
that you’re providing some level of enrichment for that pet. ... I
would encourage people to give it a try and to see how their pets
respond,” she said.
For Agarwal, his firsthand experience at shelters is undeniable
evidence that music helps comfort stressed animals, and he plans to
grow Wild Tunes into a nationwide program. The volunteers get
something out of it, too, he said.
"You get a really great way to practice your instrument or sing in
front of a nonjudgmental audience, which can boost your confidence,”
he said.
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