The Struggles of working with a Bianca

Bianca is my pet dog. She’s just like any other pet, with classic doggish hobbies: running her legs off, spinning 10 times before lying down, chasing tennis balls (and not giving them back) and walking on the park.

That’s her on her ‘”default status”

As you may see, she’s just a regular dog. Four legs, two years, two eyes, one tail and one big smile. Just like any other dog. But I have noticed a peculiar change in her behavior, SPECIALLY when I’m working. Apparently, Bianca loves music. But not ANY kind of music. The difference shows itself more clearly when I start recording.

Vocals don’t catch her attention. Once in a while, she looks at me when a guitar appears (spanish guitars, electric guitars don’t seem to interest her), but neither bass, drums, violins, flutes nor clarinets catch her attention.

Until she hears a french horn.

But not any horn, nor any articulation. She goes insane with the sound of a horn, specially when played portato. Almost as if she was obsessed with it.

Working on Wotan, Wish You Could Hear or tracks for Oceans 5, I do heavy orchestral work. Obviously, not all of them need brasses, and it’s don’t always need to use french horns.

Thank goodness. The MOMENT a horn appears, Bianca raises her ears, stops doing whatever she was doing at the moment and starts wagging her tail. That wouldn’t be an issue, except when there’s a solo (or at least, a loud and clear) french horn.

Yes, you guessed it right. She starts barking like she was possessed or something. But it’s not that typical something’s-annoying-me-please-make-it-stop bark. It’s like an excited bark, a happiness bark. It’s some sort of “OMG A FRENCH HORN OMG OMG OMG OMG” bark.

Naturally, if I could understand what she’s saying and listen to it in my own human language, it wouldn’t bother me. But what I hear is “WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF, WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF”. Annoying enough to interrupt any recording.

But, here’s the fun part, as soon as I release the key, Bianca looks at me like saying “Dad, why did you stop? I liked it!”.

Bianca, let’s get this straight, you have some very odd ways to show you like something. You don’t bark at your food plate. You don’t bark at the grass on our backyard, so why do you bark at my speakers!? I can’t take you to the opera if you’re going to be like this!

Someone at some point will invent a codified Horn-Dog dictionary. Until then, we’ll just have to put up with the Biancas of the world barking at us while we’re trying to arrange for brass.

What we do know is, wherever there may be french horns, there will be Biancas.

Don’t you ever had a pet that didn’t let you work?
Let us know!