I have a male that is 13-14 months old. Trained pretty decent on voice command but I seen a dog today that was trained to a whistle. Not back, left right type of thing. Just sit, come, that type of thing. How hard do yall think it would be to retrain my dog to a whistle. ... rather then having to say sit and stay etc. Just a few low whistle blows and he does what I want.

Is he collar conditioned?


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Yep if he knows his commands it shouldn't be a problem. Always when starting out remember "sit, whistle, sit" always do the known command followed by the new command after. He will catch on pretty fast I see Dfou asked about collar training, I would go without the collar, your dog should know what sit means but at first he does not know what the whistle means. You want the dog to associate the whistle with the word sit, not a nick from the collar. He may associate it negatively and it may confuse him. Remember the "traffic cop" as well if his sit is not solid, sit means sit until told to do other wise. The hand up will be an indicator to stay put at first. If he moves a foot, command "sit whistle sit" and then go back and move him the original place he broke from and repeat the command.

Back to dfou and the CC question, I would think after the dog has associated the whistle with sit and it sitting on the whistle alone you then know he understands that the whistle means sit. If he breaks then he is breaking a command then a low nick with a whistle would be in order. Or you could command a verbal with it to enforce it more.

I can take my dog to the end of my driveway and sit her on the side walk, go across the street and have couple of beer at my neighbor's garage and she will not move as long as she can see me. She will whistle sit at 100 yards when doing a marking drill if I want her too.

The whistle sit and whistle here....repeated toots 3 or 4 quick blast ( you go this on a check cord) are the key factors and need to be solid if you want to go further into casting ( left and right backs and overs) Which I think is a huge asset when hunting even if you don't think you will use it...which you will, hunting alone maybe not hunting with 3 or 4 guys you dog will not be able to mark 3 maybe 4 or 5 birds and will have to be handled into the area of the fall.

Find a good DVD program and start in on it working like your dog is a pup again, you will see how smart these dogs are. Not sure if you seen much handling but this is why I think it is important. [youtube]eCWRIVfRnN4[/youtube]

Later
Phil

^^^^^^^ that pretty much sums it up

solid post Phil

Thanks for 5he help guys

Here's a link that might prove helpful.