I Blew a Dog Whistle at a Dog Park...

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It ends badly...

an ultrasonic whistle, audible to dogs and some other animals but out of the range easily perceptible to the human ear, used by handlers of working dogs and by dog trainers.

A whistle acts like a megaphone, stretching the range of your communication many times beyond the natural confines of your vocal cords. Before being introduced to a whistle, dogs should master verbal commands. After that, you can start pairing your words with a pattern of blown sounds.

Whistles have been used for dog training and communication for generations. Prior to that, humans communicated with their dogs by whistling the old-fashioned way, with their breath. You can use a whistle to "talk" with your dog and establish a behavioral routine, just as you do with verbal commands or clicker training for "sit" and "stay" or playing fetch.

Dogs respond to even the quietest of whistles because they hear at a much higher frequency than humans. "Dogs and people hear about the same at low frequencies of sound (around 20Hz). This changes at high frequencies of sound, where dogs hear up to 70-100kHz, much better than people at only 20kHz," say scientists at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and dogs "hear sound frequencies at least three times as high compared to people." It may seem as if dogs react to a noise that's not there when, in reality, they're highly sensitive to something we can't hear.

Pet Owner Training Dog Using WhistleYou may have to try out a few different types of whistles to see which one offers you the range of sounds you (and your dog) prefer. Start by learning how to use the whistle properly (practice, practice, practice), and then play around with the sounds to figure out which tones will work for which commands.