Anxiety behaviors are currently being considered as animal and human mental health aims for the development of advanced treatments. These behaviors have been linked to fear-based responses; categorized as social and non-social. This review is considering the use of sounds in an open-field test (OFT) to study anxiety and its associated behaviors in dogs. Non-social fear based responses, related to sound or noise were the focus of this study. The potential use of previous animal models were examined to decide if behavior measurements can be translated across species. An analysis of rodent, canine and human behaviors will help understand how open-field tests and its methodology can be translational. Open-field tests were deemed an accurate test to measure sound-associated anxiety behaviors if various factors are considered. Genetics, historical background, dog breed classification, and risk factors should be considered when developing an accurate test that measures anxiety behaviors. Significant differences were found between research-bred and client-owned dogs. Consequently, subjects in future research studies should consider variance in response to sound-associated fear within these two populations.