Motionless In White played a show on September 16 at the Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain in Scranton, PA to mostly humans and one Golden Retriever. Footage from the show has been posted to TikTok and Twitter. No word on if the dog is a service animal or not, but more importantly is that the dog doesn't seem to be wearing any hearing protection.
Motionless In White drummer Vinny Mauro has since taken to Twitter to call out the fan who brought the dog to the show, saying on Twitter: "seeing the dog in the pit at our scranton show really bummed me out and I wanna go on record to say unless your dog is literally deaf and blind and somehow also loves to be held in the air for 3 hours, do not bring them to a show, headphones or not"
Mauro added in response to someone calling the dog's owner cruel: "I have trouble believing those headphones do anything at all for a dog. leave your pet at home or don’t go to the show in my humble opinion."
Concerns for the dog's hearing are also echoed in the TikTok video's comment sections, with people saying "Love this but please protect the pups hearing!" and "Looks like a service dog but I don't think he's having a good time.
Folks responding to Mauro on Twitter are also pretty pissed, with one person saying they even saw the dog's owner earlier in the day at the venue. "We watched the man walk the dog down to the pit earlier in the day and was shocked he was allowed to bring the dog down there period," they wrote. "I was sad to see later that the dog was in the air and had no protection during sets :( so awful and unfair"
The American Kennel Club (AKC) points out that softer sounds can be heard much louder by dogs than humans, and are way more sensitive to higher pitches. The AKC mentions that humans cannot hear much above the high frequencies beyond 20,000 Hertz, while dogs can hear somewhere between 47,000 to 65,000 Hz.
So yes, we hope the dog is okay.