Time to trailer out to a horse show? Try a little bit of Bach. Need your steed to relax for a new set of shoes? How about someTim McGraw?

Researchers know that horses benefit from certain kinds of music—classical and country, for example—in stressful situations; these sounds tend to lower their stress parameters. But that research has now led to a new high-tech innovation for equine welfare: earphones.

Controlled by Bluetooth technology, the custom-designed apparatus offers riders and handlers a way to put a little melody into their horses’ stressful experiences.

“By putting the music into specially adapted earphones for horses, we can individualize the music that each horse is hearing for each situation, knowing that every horse is a unique individual with his own ‘preferences,’” said Claire Neveux, MSc, researcher and equine behavior consultant with Ethonova, in Normandy, France