So I have a yappy dog living behind me. Mostly I ignore it even though it is egregiously annoying.
But when I’m in the yard gardening I often wondered if there wasn’t a whistle that could startle the dog into shutting the hell up. Even if just for a few minutes. Duh, dog whistle! I admit I’d forgotten such things even exist.
So I bought one, not expensive, but it does allow for adjusting the sound, up or down. Cool, sounds just what I need right? Thing is I’m unsure which setting is the highest or lowest.
You can screw it tighter together, so it’s over all shorter in length, or extend it to its full length.
My question is which is the higher setting? I’d like to start at the lower setting as I’m not trying to annoy every dog in the neighbourhood.
I actually asked where I bought it but they were unsure.
What do you think? It’s not like I can listen and figure it out, after all.
I had a dog whistle for my dog, and humans can hear them faintly, so you know that they’re working. They sound like a broken whistle to the human, and you can hear them when you are blowing them, or standing right next to the person blowing it, but that’s about it. Dogs can hear them across the yard. However, I don’t think dogs find them annoying. My dog did learn to come when I blew one, but it took the same kind of training it takes to get the dog to respond to the word “come.” When I first blew it, she just looked over at me, then just went on with what she was doing. I used it mainly because it was supposed to have more range than my voice, and if she was walking off leash, and took off, which she wasn’t supposed to do, but occasionally did anyway, she would recall to the whistle better than my voice, and it seemed to work. I worked on strengthening her off-leash heel at the same time, though, and eventually she wasn’t taking off anymore, so I didn’t need the whistle.
I don’t know if the whistle will startle the dog. It might backfire and make him bark more.
I think the owner feels when the dog is ‘vocalizing’ that it’s just chattering or something. When it’s not actively yapping it’s making a sound like its being stepped on. The owner has clearly grown accustomed to the sound and doesn’t even notice it now, I think!
If you have an okay relationship with your neighbours, talk to them first. We have two dogs and I really appreciated the neighbours telling me they were annoyed by the barking (it’s amazing how you just tune it out as an owner). We immediately rectified the situation, and all are happy
This… isn’t going to work. To a yappy dog, EVERYTHING is a stimulus to bark more.
If you have a good relationship with this neighbour, I second the suggestion to talk to them. You could even give them the whistle, along with a good dog training book, as tools to help them train their pet.
But hearing a random and inconsistent whistle blast every now and then? Nope.
Dogs are pack animals. they watch out for each other. So if one starts sounding the alarm, the rest of the pack will join in, too. That’s how a pack survives.
Thus if a dog starts barking, and the people around it start yelling, that reinforces the dog’s idea that there is a reason to sound the alarm – so the dog will bark even more. Same goes for other types of noise-making, like blowing whistles – all that commotion means that there is something to be alarmed about, so the dog will bark even more.
That’s why you usually see that yappy dogs are owned by yappy people. They reinforce each other.
