'Monk' THE SINGING DOG
I’ll never forget the first time I heard my buddy’s dog sing. ‘Monk’ was a small breed of dog, known as a Brussels Griffon, with a small mix of Shih Tzu. His tiny little face resembled that of a scruffy sailor, with beady dark eyes and at times, a sheepish little grin. My good friend Kevin So was Monk’s human dad, and on trips to Atlanta, Kevin would crash at my place. Monk was a very chill canine, and one evening, as Kevin and I were decompressing a day of events in my living room, a fascinating thing happened. Kevin and I are both musicians by trade, and while sitting around with a couple of acoustic guitars, Kevin starts singing a tune, and Monk starts wailing a dog howl, as if he were singing harmony with Kevin. The moment was startling at first, then quickly astonishing. Monk's howls would die down with Kevin’s decrescendos and rise with his volume and high notes. It was then that I believed Kevin and Monk had a deeper connection past owner and pet.
Kevin’s memoir of Monk:
My dog Monk enjoyed singing. I think it was his way of expressing affection, especially in musical situations. Very often, during band rehearsals, when the band would dynamically reach a certain climax, Monk would immediately begin singing, even in the key of the song. He was a special being and very connected to anything I was doing in the moment. There’s no emotional bond like a man and his dog.
This memory was the motivator to find other stories about dog owners who had dogs that ‘sing’. I came across an article from 2023 that includes some research by a veterinarian in Florida, Dr. Doug Mader. He quotes this about dogs: “it is a common mistake to assume that "howling" and “singing" are somehow one and the same thing. The article also quotes: “Mader pointed to a recent study by researchers from the University of Vienna, and published by the Royal Society of Biological Sciences, which indicated that dogs modulate their vocalizations in ways extraordinarily similar to those performed by humans when they try to sing to music. This strongly suggests that, in their own inimitable canine fashion, dogs who appear to be singing are in fact doing exactly that,” Mader 2023.
The interest here lies in the fact that the bond between dogs and their owners can be expressed in a myriad of ways. For me, seeing the musical bond between my friend Kevin and Monk was an amazing feat in itself, and almost unbelievable had I not witnessed it.