which whistle?

[onlyoneboot]

Hi there, I had some great advice here in the early days with onlydog, a 2 yr old rescue, and she has come on really well. She's been with us for 7 months now and is so much more relaxed and confident but is still on a long line because her recall is very unreliable and her flight was far stronger than her fight. But, I really want to let her off in certain areas as she's very friendly and loves to play and run so I tried her this morning on our usual field and she was was fine, pottered about then scampered through an open gate into the playpark. She came back fine but I'm so nervous. In the early days of having her she slipped her collar when a dog snapped at her and ran home, crossing 3 roads!

So, I have the book Total Recall and I'm thinking of trying a whistle but have just looked on amazon and don't know which one??? What do the different codes on the acme whistles mean? She's a medium sized gsd crossed with maybe collie, maybe husky. She's very fast!

Any off lead advice, reassurance welcome! I've been taking things quite slowly to build her confidence, she was a very scared wee thing when she came to us, but I'm starting to feel like the neurotic woman who doesn't let her dog off lead!!

We use the acme 2.11 plastic whistle and blow 3 longish toots.
I am not sure what perfect recall recommends, .... But when we got the whistle giant dog had no interest in it, so we started using it too signal dinner. Get him to sit and wait then call him forward to the whistle.
In quite a shirt space of time he has become very responsive, and we use it as a game out on walks , with the kids using it to recall him and treat him.
The great thing is that we all recall him the same way - except I keep on loosing them.......

There is a gun dog website that you can hear the whistles on and you can see which one your dog reacts best to.

Sorry, I can't remember the exact website but I found it through Google so it can't be that difficult to find!

I use a 210.5 for my Springer cross, cheap n cheerful from ebay.

one theory is that a 211.5 is a retriever whistle and the 210.5 a spaniel whistle because spaniels work closer to the handler and the higher pitched 210.5 noise doesn't travel as far.

the other theory i've heard is that spaniels and labradors have different hearing and they respond to the different pitches. it could be a good idea to try both of them and see which your dog seems to like best if you use this website

acmewhistles.co.uk/ you can get sound samples to try out on your dog before you buy one.

Thanks, I'll try the sounds out on her tomorrow and great advice on other threads too about recall so I'm motivated to get working on it.