Hacker News Reader

Comment by Dumblydorr | Hacker News Reader

I use whistling daily. I discovered my dog responds best to whistling, whenever he hears my whistle, he knows it's me and comes running. Now, I use that to my partner ironically, if I don't want to shout and hurt the vocal cords, just whistle and she knows her presence is requested.

View on HN

If you want to see some fun dog training with whistles search for videos of sheep dogs or waterfowl retrievers.

My cousin trained a couple of black labs to be waterfowl retrievers. I saw him in training throw out a training "duck" and hold the labs at this side with just a look. Then he whistled and they took off. About 5 feet from the "duck" he whistled again and they stopped. The dogs wanted to get to the "duck" so bad they looked like they were vibrating. He kept them there for a good 30 seconds before whistling again to signal for them to retrieve it. It was pretty cool to watch.

Not quite as cool but we have a "shock" collar on our cat to keep him off the neighbor's porch furniture. Our neighbor is very, very allergic to cats. It is activated by a 10' diameter transmitter placed under their furniture and beeps like crazy for 10 seconds before it does anything - a couple of beeps sets my cat running.

For some reason (maybe after seeing my cousin do it?) I started doing a specific whistle pattern when the cat comes in the house with the collar on. That will now stop the cat dead in his tracks and he will wait for me to take it off. The reverse is true also - if he sneaks out of the house without it on I can do the same whistle and he will stop and wait for me to put it on him.

I whistle at my SO all the time in the grocery store etc. Nobody else does it so if we're a few aisles apart usually i can just do the whistle and then we find eachother. Beats yelling like a moron

I text my wife to find them in the store; sometimes the received text sound lets me know where they are :)

Some say I'm still wandering the Wegmans, looking for sauerkraut until this very day

My mom had a special whistle she'd use to call us when it was time to come back to her at the store or wherever. Now I'm wondering how she got started with that.

>Now, I use that to my partner ironically, if I don't want to shout and hurt the vocal cords, just whistle and she knows her presence is requested.

Or you know... you COULD walk over to where she is.

Yeah, my partner's family have a "family whistle" which is often employed to find one another. It's useful but also feels a little disrespectful.

This made me realize that my dad has a specific whistle that he would use throughout my childhood and even today as an adult, to get the attention of my brother and myself if we were out somewhere. Like a "Hey, we're leaving. Let's go"

My parents had a 'if you hear this whistle, come here', which, depending on the sequence of tones, meant anything from '5 minute heads up before it is time to go' to 'literally drop what you are doing and run to this position'.

It wasn't disrespectful at all. It was a great way to communicate over wider distances than is possible with regular voice, and in retrospect it was impressive how little translation it took for all of us kids to understand which meaning was being conveyed.

My dad used to whistle at us all the time as children and he probably still does when I see him. I probably picked it up from him.

I whistled to an ex SO and they considered it disrespectful. I'm not sure I yet understand why it's disrespectful, not that I consider either opinion more or less correct. I just don't really understand that opinion.

Maybe someone can expand on it?

Or, you know...she COULD walk over to where he is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com