I am thinking about whistle training my guy for instances where he doesn't listen to come. I read and article about it and it suggested I should blow the whistle then feed him his meals, or blow it before a walk, or anything positive. That way he associates the whistle with amazing things Does anyone have their lab whistle trained?
I used Pippa's Total Recall to train our rescue dog who had zero recall when we adopted him at 9 months. He is 6 years old and has good recall both verbally and to the whistle. I also trained Hattie much later in life and she has excellent recall to the whistle and verbally, also an excellent stop whistle too. You have to go through lots of excercises to get to a good level so it's not just a case of blowing a whistle and feeding him. Also if he doesn't listen to you sometimes it's unlikely he will listen to a whistle either as you have to train your dog to have that response to a whistle. I suggest you buy Total Recall which you can buy on Amazon, a whistle and lots and lots of juicy high value treats and work through the exercises very carefully stage by stage as it sets up all difference scenarios e.g. call away from food, people, dogs etc. which will strengthen his recall. Hope this helps
My boy is whistle trained. It's not exactly for when he doesn't listen to COME though. for instance if I said COME and he didn't, blowing the whistle probably woujldn 't work either. I trained it as an altenative to COME when his COME wore out but I never used them one after the other. Not sure if that was your intention. The amazing thing my boy learned as a reward was I'd throw his ball for him. I started with North/South retrieving and morphed it into a whistle recall. I used the whistle, COME and hand signals depending where we are. The whistle is a lot louder than my voiced COME. If you have poisoned your COME another word might work as well for retraining, but again, not immediately right after each other or you might poison both.
My Labs have three whistle cues; recall, hunt and stop. They all work. But if they weren't trained and proofed, they wouldn't. The advantage of a whistle over voice is it can be consistent over a far greater distance, but if your dog doesn't listen to your cue at a distance he can hear, it's a training problem, not a problem with your tool. A whistle isn't a magic wand; you have to train your dog what it means when you blow it, just the same as you do when you say "come". If your dog doesn't respond, it's your training that needs looking at, not the method of cue delivery.
Coco is whistle-trained, though not thoroughly proofed, using Pippa's Total Recall. His whistle recall is just as reliable as his verbal recall (and visual), but the whistle carries further when Coco is off in the trees in the wind. I added the whistle later and they are now trained side-by-side. We train all his recall signal daily. We always will.
I'd like to recommend the book Total Recall too. As you've said, it involves building an association between the whistle and food, but the book gives a complete program to work through, gradually increasing the level of difficulty.
Thanks everyone! I just purchased Pippa's total recall for my kindle! He used to respond to the "come" command really well until he reached around 6 months and started marking and picking up on scents. I have a quiet voice that doesn't carry far so I'm not sure if he can't hear me or is being a hormonal teenager and just ignoring me!
They don't "just ignore" - they are suddenly distracted more by their environment, so things that were easy for them to deal with before are suddenly more difficult to ignore. It's natural, not their fault and it's all-encompassing. You have to go back to basics and basically start again at this start, forgetting that "they know what I want". They don't. As I said, a whistle isn't a magic wand. It's great - it's consistent over longer distances, whereas a voice tends to change as you shout louder, so I'd encourage you to use a whistle, but the fact remains that it's not that your dog is being wilful and ignoring you, it's that you have to give him a break at this age and go back to the start of training again, whatever method you choose.
I'm going through Total Recall with my dog Bailey at the moment-he had a good "puppy recall"but as he matured that became unreliable. He is doing really well as we go through the exercises in the book. There's nothing that compares with the joy of blowing the whistle and watching your dog turn immediately to race back to you with his ears flying in the wind!
Agree with what the others have said. My dog was 8 months or so when we got him and he would never recall to a "come" - he had learned to ignore it. I went through Total Recall and now have a dog who recalls "most" of the time to the whistle. He still completely ignores a "come".
I have a 4.5 month old black, she responds to both come and the whistle. I just started blowing the whistle first, or second followed by or lead by come. She needs to know what the word means, as well as the whistle without exception. On the windy days when she is 100 plus yards away retrieving a duck or goose for me, her safety if of the utmost importance and the whistle she will hear over my voice. Repetition, repetition, repetition. Use a leash at all times and the KEY is to never give a command you can't enforce.
I just got my acme 211.5 today. Do I just use the verbal cue and as soon as he starts his recall back to me use my chosen whistle blow to make the association. Is it a good idea to keep using the verbal cue so it doesn't become extinct? Are there any major donts when first starting to use the whistle?
Oh, never mind, I found what I need in my book. It was in the truck and wife was shopping.... I was just too excited to wait. Five tries and he's on to it. I made him stay in the back bedroom then went into the basement ( after I made the asscocistion ) and after pip pip pip someone showed up in a hurry for his roast beef delight. Lol. Very excited
In the early days when training a whistle recall (I use 5 pips) I used a verbal cue first, followed by the whistle. To make this cue association easier, I waited until pup was coming towards me. I then changed tack. I wanted the whistle to mean "come back NOW, quick as you can!" The verbal cue just means come back to me. So they are slightly different. To achieve this differentiation in the pups mind I used the "ping pong game". So now I have a very rapid response to the whistle, Bramble literally flies back to me. This is useful for retrieving, where the out (chase..) is far more exciting than the delivery. Using the whistle encourages a whiplash recall.
Could I ask for some advice - our 5 month old lab is about 70% reliable on verbal command to recall unless she has found something dead to eat (this happens quite often as we live rurally) in which case she's impossible. We've just bought Total Recall and a whistle with the intention to really try and proof the recall and make it 100% reliable. I'm just wondering whether we should start right from the beginning of recall training or whether we can do it by gradually replacing the verbal command with the whistle? (I'm sure that the issues of eating grim/dead things probably also requires additional 'Leave' training but I thought if we could focus on developing a better recall that would be a real help).
I'm going through Total Recall with my 1 year old Lab. Even though he had a good puppy recall, which faded as he matured, I chose to start from the beginning and work my way through. I want Bailey to be 100% reliable & following the book from the beginning, chapter by chapter, gives me the best chance of him learning this skill.
@maisie17 I would definitely start at the begining and work through all the exercises to make sure you proof correctly. We did with out rescue boy Charlie who had absolutely zero recall at 9 months, he is 6 years old has verbal and whistle recall because we worked through Total Recall which saved our bacon! Good luck x
