Moving from the clicker to the whistle

[Lauram]

Hello. I could with a little advice on training my dog to the whistle.

I have used the clicker and they have a strong association with click treat. I would like to use a whistle for distance training but how would I go about it.

Would it be on a long line first. WHISTLE > they come > CLICK> Treat

Or could I leave out the clicker once they get the hang of it.

Also how would I then move on to use different whistle commands to get different results.

I can practice with Alf as he is pretty well trained and learns a whole lot faster than the others, also he is more forgiving of mistakes which is excellent.

Any advice would be greatly recieved

Laura

[dodge-white boxer]

I ve just purchased a "whizz clix"- which is basically a whistle and clicker in one ( with an elastic band attached so you ve got it to hand at anytime and you cant loose it, which I m pretty good at when running around having the clicker in the pocket )
And yes you whistle, wait untill he/she comes to you,click but you ll have to "charge" the whistle first (sure thats what Victoria calls it ) whistle/wait for eye contact/click/treat,repeat untill your dog knows what the whistle means{by going back further and further}
And with different whistle noises --in the booklet it said one long blow to sit with hand signal {of your choice,will take me ages to explain that } and a couple short blows to come with hand signal
I will just be happy as long as he ll come to me ,specially out in the park with distractions everywhere
Hope this made sense,I m sure othe other guys can explain better,xxxxxxxxx

[Horace's Mum]

The whistle is basically taking the place of your verbal commands, so I would have thought you train exactly as you would for any other command but using your whistle signal instead of a word. I don't know for sure cos my boy is deaf and whistles are useless, but the principal is the same as any other communication. So you are right, if you use a long whistle for recall, then work on it the same as you would to teach it verbally - I would even cross them over so you call the dog and as soon as it is heading towards you give the whistle signal and then click when it arrives. For something like sit, ask for sit and immediately give the whistle, then click as he does it. Or you can reshape all the movements using freeshaping and instead of putting a word to each move, put a whistle to it. As the behaviour becomes more reliable, you gradually phase out the click, using a good boy and give the treat, then gradually phase the treat out. For distance work I would teach the command and then increase the distance gradually - this does work with my hand signals, so should work with your whistles.

[Lauram]

Thanks very much for the repllies. I am practicing with Alf and Po and they are getting the hang of things.

I'll let you all know how we progress