Rotate the music
Kennelled dogs were calmer while music played, but the effect faded when the same genre repeated. Rotating genres through the week kept it going.
Bowman, Dowell & Evans (2017), Physiology & Behavior. Read the paper
How it works
A routine your dog can learn
Hushpup uses passive enrichment, calm sound and scent that ask nothing of your dog, and pairs it with Pavlovian-style cues: the same scent and sound every time you leave and every time you come home. Here’s the research behind it.
Hushpup hub
A soft little hub that keeps the routine for you.
No buttons and no camera. Set your gates once in the app, and Hushpup runs the leaving and homecoming routines on its own, every day.
Sound passes through soft knit.
A speaker under the knit plays calm playlists that change from day to day.
Status you can read at a glance.
A warm dot-matrix face and a ring on top show what Hushpup is doing.
Finished to suit your home.
Three knits and four bases, from white oak to brushed graphite.
How it works
Two gates around your home. Two moments your dog can learn.
Hushpup uses your phone’s location instead of a timer. A main gate close to home marks leaving and coming back. A second gate further out tells it you’ll be gone a while.
You head out
The gates
Location instead of a timer
The first Hushpup ran on timers you set by hand, and it couldn’t tell when you were actually home. Hushpup 2.0 uses two rings around your home, set once in the app.
| Gate | What it does |
|---|---|
| Main gate, close to home | Crossing outward starts the leaving routine from the front pod. Crossing inward starts the homecoming routine from the back pod, early enough for your dog to settle. |
| Second gate, further out | Tells Hushpup you’ll be gone a while, so it switches to the long routine and rotates sounds through the day. |
| More than one person | The leaving routine waits for the last person out, and homecoming starts with the first person back. |
The research
What the studies say
Hushpup draws on research with shelter dogs, where stress is easy to measure and routines are tightly controlled. These findings shaped what the hub plays, what it diffuses and how often it changes.
Choose calming scents
Dogs exposed to lavender and chamomile spent more time resting and less time barking than dogs with no added scent.
Graham, Wells & Hepper (2005), Applied Animal Behaviour Science. Read the paper
Keep it gentle
A diffused scent fills the room and a dog can’t walk away from it. That’s why Hushpup releases short, light bursts instead of running all day.
Applied Animal Behaviour Science (2018). Read the paper
The pods
Two scents. One routine.
The front pod is for leaving and the back pod is for homecoming. Press one in until it clicks, and the face turns its X into a check.
- Volume
- 3 ml each
- Size
- Ø18 × 22 mm
- Body
- Clear glass, so you can see the oil
- Refills
- Sent when a pod runs low
Choose automatic refills at a level you set, or get a reminder and reorder with one tap. You only pay for what your dog actually uses.
Why it works
Dogs need routine, not repetition.
A predictable cue tells your dog what’s happening. Variety in between keeps it from fading into background noise. Hushpup does both.
The same cue, every time
Leaving always smells and sounds the same, so your dog learns it means you’ll be back.
Sounds that keep changing
In shelter studies, rotating music kept dogs calmer through the week than playing the same thing every day.
Nothing to remember
Your gates do the work. There are no buttons to press on the way out the door.
When you leave, they wait.
Help them wait calmly.
Choose a knit and a base, and your first pair of pods comes in the box.