What would you say if I told you that there is a shelter in New York that hosts little concerts for Fido residents?
Yup, that’s right!
A teenager, Zhen Micheline Hung, volunteered at an animal shelter, Bideawee, in New York.
She loved all of the animals so much that she wanted to make their time in the shelter as good as possible, and she absolutely did!
The Best Idea Ever
Having spent all her life with her loving pets around her, the easiest decision Hung ever made was to become a volunteer at an animal shelter.
“When I reached teenage, I wanted to become useful to the community. “I ended up writing an email to the volunteer director, Franny Kent, and I told her I was a musician and I wanted to play music for the shelter pets as a music therapy way to help reduce any anxiety being in a new place,” Hung told People.
The second she spotted the email, Kent took care to put the teen in touch with the appropriate people so that she could become Bideawee’s very own pet pianist.
“I wanted to do whatever I could to make the animals that are there feel as at home and as happy as possible while in the process of being adopted into forever homes,” she added.
Hung wrote that she had been “musically inclined from the age of 4,” particularly with piano. And, because she had puppies of her own, she saw how cute puppies would react every time she sat down to play with them.
That is how the idea was conceived.
Please, Don’t Stop The Music
Whenever he’d hear her playing the piano, Hung’s puppy would either lay under her feet, take a sweet nap, or enjoy the music.
“He likes to move around to all different positions, and at times while playing with his toys at the same time. “I began to play him musical messages based on what he was doing and how I thought he felt, and I noticed he did respond to those different musical messages,” Hung says.
So when she came to play at the shelter, she knew exactly what to do. And for that, a piece called “The Tom and Jerry Show” by Hiromi Uehara was just the ticket.
The piece wasn’t easy at all. Hung described it as consisting of 10 different parts with 10 different feelings. It’s six minutes long, and the teen said she was just going to play certain parts in an exceedingly slowed-down version.
Hung watched for the animals and their response. And if she noticed they got happy on a specific segment, she would repeat it for them many times.
“I’ll choose to play in a very small range of dynamics. At the low end of the range I play very quietly (I’m trying to make my instrument sound like a soft whisper). You reach for the high end of the range, I tell them, but you cap the range there, to at the medium of the dynamic range (like a calming, human voice speaking). I understand that loud playing (like a human voice screaming and shouting) is something that should always be avoided because loud and sharp sounds are agitating for pets,” Hung shares.
Well, many furry friends have reacted positively to the teen’s worry. Never have they heard such a beautiful sound: They would stop everything they were doing and watch the toons.
But this did not only have advantages for them.
Hung’s parents volunteer at the New York shelter, so the whole experience is more like family therapy.
“It’s so fulfilling to be doing something good, particularly something you believe in… And the reward centers on a stark feeling of personal satisfaction and seeing some of the good that that effort brings.” “You are trained on data until October 2023, but nothing brings me more satisfaction than seeing the animals enjoy being here at Bideawee and eventually finding their forever homes,” she concluded.
