Here is a double-dose of palate cleansing for the weekend. The dogs again, because dog stories always seem to rank high on the feel-good meter. But this story also highlights the beauty, creativity, and power transmitted through people who use their God-given gifts and opportunities to make the world a better place.
Being of service to animal- and humankind, is the subject of this week’s Feel-Good Friday.
Hat tip to our editor Bob Hoge, who happened upon this gem.
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Houston’s Yuvi Agarwal is a music prodigy who has been playing the piano since the age of four. He also has an incredible love for dogs, and through a school program, spent time at the local shelter reading to the animals, because it had a calming effect on them. Then one day while he was practicing piano, Agarwal noticed the music had this same calming affect on his own Goldendoodle Bozo. Agarwal’s incredible, young mind started making connections.
One afternoon in the spring of 2023, after reading to a husky who became relaxed, Yuvi flashed back to his piano comforting Bozo. If reading can calm animals so much, what if I started my own program where I came and played music for them? he wondered.
Curious, Yuvi did research and found that live music lowers the stress hormones in pets, which in turn allows them to show their true personalities. “This could help them connect with adopters and fosters, resulting in them getting more homes!” he enthused, anxious to share his idea and give it a trial run.
At nine years old, Agarwal had acute powers of deductive reasoning and observation to see how music affected his family pet. He could have just noticed it, found it fascinating, and then gone on with his very young and productive life. Instead, after he made those significant connections, he worked to find a way to parlay these revelations into a way to help animals find peace and healing. That’s incredibly caring and compassionate, and reflects that Agarwal has emotional intelligence beyond his years, on top of all the rest.
From these two discoveries, and with help from his parents, Agarwal launched his vision; and Wild Tunes was born.
It’s often said music is the universal language of humanity. Now, a 12-year-old Houston boy is putting that to the test for an unlikely audience—man’s best friend. Yuvi Agarwal started playing keyboard when he was 4 and several years ago noticed his playing soothed his family’s restless goldendoodle, Bozo. He grew curious if it also could help stressed homeless animals. With help from his parents, who both have backgrounds in marketing, he founded the nonprofit Wild Tunes in 2023 to recruit musicians to play in animal shelters. So far, he has enlisted about 100 volunteer musicians and singers of all ages and abilities to perform at nine shelters in Houston, New Jersey, and Denver.
Months after the non-profit was launched, Agarwal had the passion to take Wild Tunes nationwide.
I want to expand it and eventually make it into a nationwide initiative where people can just openly participate, he said. And they just need to love animals and be able to play a melodious instrument.
Three years later, Wild Tunes has been adopted at shelters in three states. How incredible is that?
Wait! That has grown to four. The city of Downey, California, signed with the non-profit in 2025.
Last Friday, SEAACA launched Wild Tunes, a program founded by 12-year-old Yuvi Agarwal that brings live music to shelter pets.@seaaca @wildtunes_byyuvi#SEAACA #WildTunes #AnimalEnrichment #DowneyCA #CommunityEvent #MusicForGood pic.twitter.com/2xb4CXlUZY
— City of Downey – Government (@CityofDowney) August 5, 2025
Agarwal excitedly related how it doesn’t matter the genre, or whether or not the music has lyrics. Music is the universal language — even across different species.
“You don’t have to understand the lyrics to enjoy the music,” Yuvi said recently after playing hits like the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect” on his portable keyboard at the Denver Animal Shelter. “Just enjoy the melody, the harmony, and the rhythms. So it transcends linguistic barriers, and … it can [even] just transcend species.” Yuvi noted that many of his four-legged listeners, which usually include dogs and cats, become excited when he enters their kennel. But after a few minutes of playing, they calm down; some even go to sleep.
After the carnage of this week, it restores hope in humanity, and in the next generation, to bear witness to Yuvi Agarwal using his talents to not just change the life of dogs and cats, but to motivate and encourage others to change their own life by doing the same.
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Editor’s Note: At RedState, it’s not all about politics and policy. We like to bring attention to what’s good in the world, with columns like “Feel-Good Friday,” “Start Your Weekend Right,” and “Hoge’s Heroes.”
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