# Whistle training



## rooroch

A friend of mine who has a rescue lurcher who loves to run and run trained her to a whistle. It is a simple basket ball referee whistle and it works like a dream.
Good luck


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## Alaska7133

Post over on hunt and field. We use whistles for that purpose. One chirp stops them, three chirps to return to us. My dogs aren't that great at it, we are a work in progress.


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## sterregold

They are the communication tool of choice for field work as the sound carries much better than the voice. I start conditioning that recall when my dogs are baby puppies. I do a light tweet-tweet-tweet at mealtime and then put their food down. They get a reward EVERY time they come to the tweet, and when introducing it I only do it in an environment where I have a way to influence them to comply via reward (fence restricted zone, long line, reward to influence them, etc)


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## Mollymoo

That's a good idea tooting before giving her meal I make her sit and wait before putting the food down then wait for her to look at me before saying go on then. When would be the best time to toot the whistle? I have been giving 2 toots of the whistle and when she looks at me I say here Molly and she runs up to me for party and treat. She's not food orientated so she gets loads of vocal praise and body rubs which she loves. I mainly want to use the whistle to get her attention on me as she loves to run up to everyone and sometimes it's not appropriate and I need her to come straight back to me. She is now 19months old and very much a work in progress. One thing I have noticed with her she does like to keep an eye on me she just also forgets herself and wants to play. Any tips on conditioning her to respond to the whistle are greatly appreciated.


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## sterregold

Toot the whistle when she is coming to the room where she will be fed. You can also keep some of her ration out and periodically toot the whistle when she is occupied laying about and then give her a couple of kibbles when she comes. Just keep it random, always reward compliance, and always have a way to bring her in once you have blown the whistle. Once she gets relaible with that then start to add distractions and distance.


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## Mollymoo

I have started tooting at random intervals she was fast asleep and I gave 2 blasts and she came to me looking all bleary eyed I felt abit mean really waking her up so I won't do that too often. Wouldn't it be so much easier if humans and dogs could just understand each other. Lol


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## Mollymoo

Well, it's been 2 weeks now using the whistle and I must be honest, I'm impressed with it so far. Molly is responding very well and comes running most times when I use it. Still a while to go yet with it but so far she is doing really well. I tooted her at the park the other day and she came bounding right to me breaking off playing with another dog. The owner of the other dog said "can we swap dogs" it made me proud of her as normally that would be my saying. On our next one to one training session we are going to start on emergency recall as that will be my peace of mind when letting her off lead in new places. I'm so pleased I did something about her bad recall habits instead of just thinking shell grow out of it. She is nearly 20 months old now and has grown into a really lovely dog we love her to bits. On top of this we have started leaving her out of the crate while we are at work. The most time she is home alone is 5 hours and I'm pretty sure she sleeps most of this time. She is doing so well I'm so proud.


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