An animal shelter can be an unsettling environment for its furry residents, particularly dogs and cats.

One woman is hoping to change that for the West Valley City Animal Shelter.

Kelly Cann has been raising money through a GoFundMe account to help purchase a sound system called iCalmPet that sends relaxing music through the shelter to help reduce the stress and anxiety pets can feel by being in an unfamiliar environment full of different sounds.

The audio is produced at frequencies that appeal to dogs and cats to help calm the nerves and jitteriness. “It’s called sonic anchoring and frequency modulation,” said Cann, who lives in Provo. “It’s really targeting the nervous system and allows them to calm down.”

iCalmPet is essentially a Bluetooth speaker, which can be placed in each room of the shelter where the canines and felines are kept. The pet-friendly music is loaded onto a memory card and played through those speakers. The effects of the calming sounds can go beyond the shelter tenure of the dogs and cats. “There’s often a high return rate of pets (to the shelter), so when they’ve either played it at the shelter for people coming to look at a pet or sending them (the pets) home, they’ve had lower return rates because it allowed the animal to feel calm,” Cann explained. “It’s so cathartic for them.” 

Cann came across the idea of music for shelter animals by doing some research on pets and music and finding the work of sound researcher and music producer Joshua Leeds. He had studied animal “bioacoustics,” and his research led him to create musical compilations titled “Calm Your Canine,” “Cat Calming,” and “Human Animal-Bond.” 

The daily functions of the animal shelter are not always conducive to the animals' feeling peace. “When it gets really busy, it tends to amp up the animals,” said Tess Hartwell, animal care and enrichment supervisor at the West Valley City shelter. She described the busy times as when staff members are cleaning the facility each morning or generally when there are lots of humans moving around the place. The dogs are especially susceptible to the noise. A few dogs will react by barking and that will set off a chorus of barks from their fellow canines. “It can cause stress to them,” Hartwell added.

Cats aren’t immune to the commotion either but they handle it differently. “The cats can hear a lot of our dogs barking. They want to get away from the loud sounds,” Hartwell said. “The way our shelter is set up, we don’t have a great separation of some of our cat rooms and our dog rooms.”

“iCalmPet speakers help a lot to distract from the barking,” she said, noting that when the dogs are quieter, the cats are more relaxed.

As of early March, the shelter had 44 cats, three dozen dogs, eight rabbits and two chickens. It’s unknown whether the iCalmPet music has any effect on the latter two animal groups.

Cann’s fundraising goal is $500 to purchase enough iCalmPet speakers to cover 10 rooms at the West Valley City Animal Shelter. Her GoFundMe account can be found at www.gofundme.com/icalmforshelterpets.