silent whistles??

[wendall]

anyone use a silent whistle for training?

i would think that it would be similar to clicker training right? say sit, dog sits, blow whistle for 2 seconds and praise. after a bit, a 2 second whistle should trigger a sit right?

if anyone has any info on this, please let me know. i just ordered one of the whistles to try out.

thanks, wendall

[jones]

Wendall, I don't know about the silent whistles, but I just want to let you know I believe you have misunderstood clicker training. The click is not a command - that is, the dog will not sit when he hears the sound. The click is a marker that means "you did it right, exactly when you heard that sound."

You should check out this site to learn about clicker training. It is really easy to understand, and the videos are fantastic. www.clickertrainusa.com

[wendall]

jones,
i have done a little reading on clicker training and i realize that it is used as a praise type thing. give command, dog does the correct thing, click, treat and praise.

i was thinking if i did this it should work.

give command
dog does correct thing
blow a certain whistle pattern
treat and praise.

then, after a while the dog should learn to respond to only the whistle right? am i expecting too much from him to try and learn this method?

wendall

[jones]

Well, I don't think that would work because of where the whistle is used - it's used as a marker, not a command. If you want your dog to respond only to a whistle pattern, here's how you could do it - in THEORY - I don't know if it work actually work, but this is how to try.

It would probably be easier to start with something your dog already knows - take "sit," for example.

Say sit, and then blow the whistle pattern.
Dog sits.
Click & treat OR just praise & treat.

Repeat many times. Then try just the whistle pattern. If the dog does not respond, go back to using the word & the whistle pattern for a while longer. Eventually it would go -

Blow whistle pattern for "sit."
Dog sits.
Click & treat OR just praise & treat.

Another way of doing it is if you already have a hand signal for "sit" (it's always easier to have hand signals AND voice commands), use the hand signal in conjunction with the whistle. So that would be -

Blow whistle pattern while making "sit" hand signal.
Dog sits.
Click & treat OR praise & treat.

HTH

[wendall]

thanks Jones,
I should have it on Wednesday or Thursday. I mostly want to use it as a recall device and will be concentrating on that.

I myself can't whistle that loud and I am afraid if I yell my dogs name to recall from a distance he may think he is in trouble and I don't want that.

he is merely a pup, and I NEED to get him into classes. Mostly just to socialize.

He is doing well with sit, down, stay and now learning roll over, but his recall is poor to say the least.

I guess once he gets stay down, the real recall training will begin.


Thanks again for the replies, Wendall