BANGKOK, Thailand — A Thai entrepreneur who launched an Internet radio station for dogs this week said he hopes to reach out to the kingdom’s pooches and cheer them up.
Anupan Boonchuen, director of a dog grooming school in Bangkok, said he launched Dog Radio Thailandexternal link on Wednesday because noticed that dogs seem happier when he plays music as he grooms them.
“I have close contact with dogs every day. Dogs get in a better mood if they listen to music,” Anupan said Thursday.
Often while Anupan’s students practice grooming for the first time, they do not know how to handle the dogs. So during class, he said he plays music because it “puts the dogs in a good mood and they’re more willing to let the groomers handle them.”
The programming on dogradiothailand.com mainly consists of Thai pop music, but Anupan also plans to air programs in which the DJ will “talk to the dogs in Thai” — to which the canine listener will be encouraged to respond.
“At 9 a.m., we may have a dog greeting show, in which we’ll repeat ‘sawasdee’ (‘hello’) over and over … If we say ‘sawasdee,’ in some houses, the dog may lift both paws in response. In some houses, the dog may lift only one paw. It depends on how the dog was trained,” Anupan said.
Anupan said he had long dreamed of starting a radio station for dogs, but it always seemed too expensive. He was able to bring his project to fruition after hearing an international news story about a low-cost Internet radio station for dogs in the United States.
He hopes that the DJ will be able to communicate through the radio and that the dogs will respond.
“If we play a slow song, we may have the DJ howl … because dogs howl, too, when they hear sad sounds,” Anupan said.
