The One Sense Most Vets Miss, with Dr. Janet Marlow
What if the key to your pet's health has been hiding in plain sound? In this episode, Dana sits down with Dr. Janet Marlow, a classically trained guitarist, Carnegie Hall performer, and the pioneer behind species-specific music for animals. After noticing the profound relaxation her own dogs and cats showed during her practice sessions, Janet left a legacy music career to answer a question no one in veterinary medicine was asking: what do animals actually hear, and how does it affect their health?
Janet spent three years researching animal audiology before creating Pet Acoustics in 2009 — and how her team has now conducted over 50,000 hearing screenings across 76 countries, revealing that 1 in 2 pets has some level of hearing loss. She introduces us to the Pet Acoustics app: a free, two-minute, fear-free digital hearing test any pet parent or veterinary practice can use today.
Whether you're a veterinarian looking to differentiate your practice, or a pet parent wanting to do more for your animal's long-term wellness, this episode will change the way you think about sound.
Key Takeaways:
- Sound comes before behavior. What looks like anxiety or reactivity in the exam room may actually be a hearing response. Treating the behavior without assessing hearing means missing the root cause.
- 1 in 2 pets has some degree of hearing loss. Drawn from 10,000 screenings across 76 countries. The loss is often frequency-specific and gradual — owners mistake it for stubbornness or selective hearing.
- The tool gap in vet medicine is wide open. Between the clipboard-drop and the BAER test, there’s been nothing routine, affordable, and fear-free. The Pet Acoustics app fills that gap in two minutes, no equipment, no sedation.
- Species-specific music is not the same as calming music for humans. It’s composed frequency by frequency for animal hearing ranges, validated biometrically (cortisol, HRV, pulse rate) against classical music and silence. Mozart was not writing for dogs.
- Longitudinal hearing data changes the clinical conversation. Just like baseline bloodwork, a hearing screen at every life stage gives vets something to track over time — and gives pet parents a concrete, actionable role in their animal’s wellness between visits.
