Stop Whistle

[slipper 116]

Hi folks looking for some tips and advice on teaching a 6 month old springer to obey the stop whistle thank you

[mushroom 13,522]

Kick the sh.....

 

Hand signals are important imo I use a flat palm held high with the whistle. Start small, in an enclosed area is best and not big enough to let the dog go mad (Normal sized back garden is fine) reinforce when you give the command so when you whistle and raise your hand if you are sure the dog has heard but not obeyed then take hold of the dog, move it to the spot it was at when you whistled and enforce the stay command using the same hand signal and whistle (my order is hand, whistle then command) When the dog learns this is all linked it will pre empt the command when it hears the whistle

[ftm 3,357]

as above but would have been doing it a bit earlier than 6 months

[slipper 116]

Have I left it to late? Since I've had her from 2 months old I have been concentrating on recall sit stay and retreive, which she is ok at she struggles with the retreive when I take her outside but retreives ok indoors, she also walks to heel ok so my main concern is polishing up her retrieving and getting her to stop. I was told to forget the stop command untill I have mastered the retreiving is this true? She is very bright and from good working parents so I'm hoping it will turn out ok in the end I'm in no rush but worried is there an age where if I haven't trained her by it will be to late? As some chaps have there dogs trained by twelve months!

[mushroom 13,522]

Have I left it to late? Since I've had her from 2 months old I have been concentrating on recall sit stay and retreive, which she is ok at she struggles with the retreive when I take her outside but retreives ok indoors, she also walks to heel ok so my main concern is polishing up her retrieving and getting her to stop. I was told to forget the stop command untill I have mastered the retreiving is this true? She is very bright and from good working parents so I'm hoping it will turn out ok in the end I'm in no rush but worried is there an age where if I haven't trained her by it will be to late? As some chaps have there dogs trained by twelve months!

Dogs are strange feckers

 

If the sit is there you can build on it with the stay.... take your time

 

As for the retrieving my staff would retrieve anything I pointed at or hid; the remote, keys, fur and feather etc no matter where she was. the lurcher had perfect retrieve of game in the field and totally not interested in anything like a stick or a ball... Throw a ball in the house and the cnut would be straight after it and bring it back, throw it in the park and he would make a cnut out of you staring as if to say "it's not running away"

[ftm 3,357]

its far from being to late pal maybe start now and hopefully dog will master it in a month or so I stop mine on every walk I do 1st few where hopeless but it doesn't take long for springers to pick up commands -good luck

[Casso 1,261]

Six months is perfect ,

[slipper 116]

Thanks very much for putting me at ease, while I'm on here how many retreives is the norm per session for this age?

[ftm 3,357]

2-3 keep it simple/enjoyable I always end retrieving with me retrieving last dummy and making dog stay /watch

[Philluk 181]

Im going to edit this to make it simple.

A Stop whistle is also a sit whistle but the command means sit and stay, do not try and do this any further than 2 ft away from you until you have mastered it by you. so


whenever you are training put the whistle in your mouth, if you don't the dog will read what you will do, Walk the dog on lead on your left close to you using the command heel, and at random on a path, field anywhere say sit and blow once, even if you dog sits to command do this. Make sure you get an instant sit, if you don't get it instant push gently on the bum area don't push down. When your ready say heel and walk on, don't always stay for the same length of time your dog will predict this, do this loads of times always on lead, when mastered do it off lead. Always break the command with a command, ie you say sit or blow, the dog sits and stays sitting till you tell him otherwise your turning a sit whistle into a stop whistle at close range. Then and only then try a few more exercises,

 

as you walk in a field on or off lead blow whistle without saying the word sit - now you have the dog sitting to a whistle, don't forget loads of praise, so walk along to start with slow down blow but you keep walking only 2 paces then stop and return to your dog. then do 4 paces then 6 etc. if at any point the dog moves don't shout just grab the collar and return it to the spot where it was and blow once as you say sit. keep doing this. then

 

you can extend this to the recall do the same as above but walk say 10 paces, turn and face the dog blow twice and call his name when it comes to you make it sit in front when done praise the dog. to start with the dog may just sit, again DO not raise your voice take 2 steps closer bend over slightly and do the same again, if it doesn't work do the same again but get on the floor as soon as he comes to you make a fuss that's all you need to do, a dog will learn to stay unless you call it and you will get to the stage where you walk stop the dog and keep walking with your back to the dog when you have got 20 paces blow the recall and he should come, he is connecting the 2 blows with a call from my dad I get praise, but make him sit before that fuss.

 

don't always do the above as the dog will know, so out of say 10 times walking away return to the dog 7 times and praise.

 

now do the above as often as you can for as long as you can, so 10 min sessions as many times as you can.

but also at home When you feed put whistle in mouth say sit blow whistle once make him stay and wait then send him for his dinner.

then as you are doing this you can introduce the hand command so if your dog is facing you hold your hand flat side at him blow whistle and or say sit, loads of praise. So all 3 as you face your dog mean sit, the hand, command, and the word. Then start to drop any one and use 2 then use any one.

Job done master that before you try anything more than 10 ft away and post on here when he does that or send me a PM and we can move on to distance work. but you must have him sitting everytime and your able to walk away, you can see how we have turned the sit whistle into a stop whistle, remember to break the sit up with a heel command

 

couple of tips never set your dog to fail, so if your out walking and your just about to blow the whistle and you see another dog coming he will be watching that so until you have this mastered he will look at the dog and ignore you so by blowing the whistle you know he will fail, likewise a field of fresh running rabbits the same.

 

if your having a bad day give up, things not going well do something that he does well and give up there are days when its not going to work and you must as much as you want to ring his neck smile and say to yourself whatever you like but smile and be nice to the dog, once training becomes pain its a different pot. always end on a high loads of praise.

 

Training a dog is all about flow, teach the basics get her sitting and stopping why when you throw a retrieve she will run in, you say you were told to forget the stop and master the retrieve, how can you command your dog if you cant stop him? age is irrelevant but the longer you leave her to do what he wants the harder it is, like driving a car you try and teach your parents to drive now after driving for x yrs, they can do it but it will be hard. on here you will see a lot of get the basics right if you do as above and master it when you start retrieving you make the dog sit you throw dummy, you point at dummy giving the direction and give the command fetch, then you recall your dog by whistle and said dog comes back with dummy sits and you take it, that's the flow if you don't have that order right it wont work.

 

hope it makes sense

Edited February 18, 2014 by Philluk

[hily 380]

can I just point out that you should work on the weak aspects of the dog not its strengths so if he doesn't hunt hard but retrieves well then use the dummy to get the pup to hunt and if he parks his bum when on the lead when you stop walking then that's the time to bring on the stop whistle my take on this is you are just taking what the dog has easily learnt and moving on to what you want him to do without to much fuss.o m o mind .

[Philluk 181]

can I just point out that you should work on the weak aspects of the dog not its strengths so if he doesn't hunt hard but retrieves well then use the dummy to get the pup to hunt and if he parks his bum when on the lead when you stop walking then that's the time to bring on the stop whistle my take on this is you are just taking what the dog has easily learnt and moving on to what you want him to do without to much fuss.o m o mind .

 

Eh?????

[hily 380]

What I was trying to put across was you have to add commands into the training as the dog progresses while maturing and its ability to understand your commands grow and not decide to concentrate on one at a time. As we are posting about springers at 6 months you assume the lad has his dog at heel at this age and you advise from this starting point not taking into consideration the dogs temperament many folk I know will not teach a spaniel to walk at heel until later on in its training they get the flow of hunting first and decide what the dogs natural abilities are they polish these but put a little more work on the weaker points of the dogs abilities within the training so build up the dogs understanding of what you want it to do 'hope I made my first attempt a little bit clearer. Philluk I don't class myself as a dog trainer and what you advise is sound text book stuff I was trying to add a bit to the topic and not confuse it as I say this is only my take on it and by no way to be taken as gospel

[hily 380]

What I was trying to put across was you have to add commands into the training as the dog progresses while maturing and its ability to understand your commands grow and not decide to concentrate on one at a time. As we are posting about springers at 6 months you assume the lad has his dog at heel at this age and you advise from this starting point not taking into consideration the dogs temperament many folk I know will not teach a spaniel to walk at heel until later on in its training they get the flow of hunting first and decide what the dogs natural abilities are they polish these but put a little more work on the weaker points of the dogs abilities within the training so build up the dogs understanding of what you want it to do 'hope I made my first attempt a little bit clearer. Philluk I don't class myself as a dog trainer and what you advise is sound text book stuff I was trying to add a bit to the topic and not confuse it as I say this is only my take on it and by no way to be taken as gospel

sorry philluk just noticed that slipper does say he has the dog at heel. I still think temperament comes into it when to start the stop whistle training and to start to early with it can make a dog very sticky when out hunting and to me having to urge a dog on to hunt is as bad as it running in you can enforce the stop whistle but its not so easy to up its hunting skill Anyway of track all I can add to comments is slipper slow down with the training take your time 6 months is no age most folk don't start the real training until the pup is a bit older.

[Philluk 181]

Hi Hily

 

I agree re temperament, I don't know any trainer (and im not a trainer ive had working dogs best part of 35 yrs) who teaches a dog to hunt, we don't teach dogs to hunt we encourage dogs to hunt what we want them too, if you walk into a field with sheep does your dog run after them? no - why? because we have not encouraged them too in fact we growl if they look at sheep. so they switch their noses on to what we want, and training is the same there is a difference in training and playing but playing can lead to bad habits which is ok but we have to get them out of those bad habits. that's why we teach to flow, there is no point going to your field throwing a dummy and let the dog pick it up and run around you, you then chase him its a great game he will love it but when he does that the next day with the dummy you will be the dummy. The way I train may not be the way you train, I know people who train to flush and when a rabbit runs a dog sits, I don't I let mine chase it and some they have caught, this is the ultimate goal for any dog and it sharpens them up big time you ask any of the running dogs, if their lurcher was never allowed to catch would it still be as keen, yes it would but would it be as good prob not.

 

Starting too early, Im not getting into this i'm not a believer in a date to start, some kids do exams at a younger age than others, so why cant dogs, my working cocker has done 2 seasons on pheasants now, and he is working very well there is a video on this forum of him in action last month in the next page under show videos of your dog. how old would you say he is?

 

you are right about " you have to add commands as the dog progresses" and yes the dog may walk at heel, but the dog has to walk at heel to obey the command, there is no point moving on from that if you haven't got that bit mastered. why? because if a dog understands the word sit means sit and it sits and you walk and he follows you he has learnt that the sit means stay here til you move not sit stay and move when I tell you, move when I give another command and then in a couple of months at 50 yds we will blow that whistle and the dog will sit your hand will be in the air and the retrieve is behind him, you give the command back and he will/should work back. but to get there we have to first be able to stop the dog and the dog needs to look at me and wait for its command whatever it will be. a dog sitting and looking around is no good.

 

now if you get the flow of hunting first every time you go out your dog will have its nose down, again this is no good a dog is like a man (my wife keeps telling me this) it can only process one thing at a time.

 

if you don't start training a dog from the day you get it you will have bad habits to get rid of as well a teach new things. nothing wrong with spending hours in a day playing with a pup and that play is training. when you feed it make it sit and wait, place the food down don't let it touch it, get a toy throw it let him carry it, make him sit, make him drop it, these can all be taught from day 1 and then as the pup develops as does training and those games you played at an early age can be brought in.

Edited February 19, 2014 by Philluk