Tone Training

written by Butch Goodwin
       of                     

Northern Flight Retrievers  

For a few minutes, try to forget what you may have heard or read over the years about how to incorporate the use of a “tone” into your e-collar training. Forget about using the tone as a “warning” before stimulation; forget about using the tone as “praise” for a job well-done. I am going to update you with a training plan for using the tone to control your dog silently, regardless of the distance or surrounding noise.

   In the previous issue of The Retriever Journal (December 2006/January 2007), as an adjunct to Steve Smith’s “Pheasant Glimpses” article, I wrote a short sidebar titled “Silent Hunting with a Retriever.” Apparently, the idea of communicating with a dog by using a tone or vibration mode on a collar — which has been embraced by hunters with pointing dogs to recall their dogs from a long distance — seems to have recently stirred some interest among retriever owners.   

   Before we get started, let me say that this might not be something you want to include in your training if you aspire to run field trials or hunt tests since a dog isn’t allowed to wear a collar in competition. And this training requires that your collar system have a separate button on the transmitter to activate the tone, vibration, or beeper mode on the collar receiver.

   During our 2005 pheasant season in Idaho, my young male dog and I happened to reach a small footbridge on one of our local Wildlife Management Areas at the same time as a rather seasoned German shorthair. As the pointer approached the bridge, I heard a rather loud series of beeps, and the dog spun on his heels and ran back toward his owner who had suddenly appeared out of the brush about 50 yards away. After exchanging info about how many birds we had seen (or not seen), I asked the hunter about his signaling his dog with the beeper collar to call him back.

You'll have to pay attention of where the collar sits on the dogs neck if you want him to hear the tone.

   With the speed that the dog turned, I was sure that he had hit him with a jolt of electricity as well as the intermittent beeping. The hunter told me that he didn’t even have an e-collar on this old dog — that he conditioned his dogs to come back to him when they heard the continuous beeping. He said that he also conditioned them to “whoa” when they heard a single beep. And he volunteered that he no longer even used a whistle, relying solely on the beeper collar for controlling his dogs. I was pretty intrigued. If this would work with a pointer, it certainly would work with a retriever. Maybe I should consider buying a beeper collar for my retrievers and condition them to come when they hear the beeps. Maybe it would work when they were swimming across a noisy river instead of blowing my lungs out in an effort to have them
hear my whistle. It has always bothered me to listen to a hunter standing beside the river or in a pheasant field, playing a tune on a whistle while all of the birds in earshot head for country where there is less commotion. It made perfect sense to me.

So after the hunting seasons ended and the ice was off of the ponds and rivers, my next step was to contact my friend Steve Snell at Gun Dog Supply in Mississippi for advice about beeper collars. I figured that since Steve is in the business, knows what is available, and has tried almost every system on the market, he could point me in the right direction for what I was planning to do.

   Steve set me straight all right. First, he suggested that I read some of the articles he had written on his website about how beeper collars work and also his reviews of the various collar systems with tone and vibration features. Then he gave me some very solid advice: For training a retriever, where it isn’t necessary to locate them at a long distance but to condition them to respond as
they would when they hear a whistle, go with a collar with a separate tone or a separate vibration mode, not with a beeper collar. A tone is a fairly quiet sound that can only be heard close to the collar; a vibration mode (similar to a pager) makes no noise whatsoever but is felt by the dog on his neck. But a beeper is quite loud and can be heard as far as 400 yards away!

   Steve also advised against using the tone or vibration as a “warning” before stimulation if I was going to use it for teaching silent commands. If the dog has been trained properly and understands the command and chooses not to comply, he needs a correction — not a warning. Along the same lines, you don’t want to use a tone for “praise” after successfully mastering a command. Of course, the dog needs praise for correct performance, but the praise needs to come from the trainer, not from the collar.

   So, armed with all of my newfound knowledge and a collar with a tone feature, I developed a plan for teaching one of my dogs to respond to the tone the same as he would respond to the whistle commands. Now please understand, I wanted as few obstacles in my path as possible, so I started with a reasonably well-trained dog. I wanted to see what it would take to overlay the tone commands to my previously taught whistle commands. My plan was to eventually eliminate the whistle entirely, having him respond solely to the tone. And honestly, I found it to be much less difficult to teach than I had anticipated.

The dog I started with would already come to me when he heard multiple blasts from a whistle. He had been taught to run handling patterns and moderate blind retrieves, thus he would stop, turn, sit, and look back at me for casts when he heard a single whistle blast. He was steady and had one season of waterfowl and upland hunting under his belt. His training had been reinforced with an c-collar, but he had never heard a tone before. (Side note: The first time I pushed the tone button with the collar around his neck, he tilted his head back and forth and looked all around, searching for the origin of this unknown, strange sound!)

There will be a separate button for the tone: on this SportDog 2000, it's on the side of the transmitter.

   In a matter of just a few training sessions, I was able to teach him to come when he heard the intermittent tone. I started by using the same rapid series of whistle blasts that had meant “come" since he was a pup. At the same time, I pushed and held the tone button, which caused a rapid pulsating tone to emit from the collar receiver attached to his neck. Over the first couple of days’ training, I don’t think he made any connection between the whistle command and the tone.

   But gradually, after a few days of  overlaying the whistle with hearing the tone coming from the collar, I was able to begin to phase out and then eliminate the whistle command entirely — he was definitely responding solely to the tone.

   At this point in our training, after I felt that he understood the meaning of the pulsating tone, it was time to try another command. This time I ran him  on a three-leg lining pattern that he was  quite familiar with. As I had done in the past, I planned to stop him about halfway to one of the piles and cast him to a different pile — a very straightforward lining and casting drill. He had done this many times, and stopping on a single whistle blast wasn’t a problem.

   But this time when I stopped him. I overlaid my whistle blast with a single, quick push on the tone button. Now he was hearing the single whistle blast that he was familiar with along with a single tone coming from the collar. After sitting and facing me, I cast him as usual, and when he picked up the bumper, instead of blowing a series of  intermittent “come-in"whistle blasts, I held the tone button down so he only heard the collar’s pulsating tone. I was teaching him a second tone command (stop, turn, sit, and face me), but I was also continuing to reinforce the “come” command that he had learned previously.

   Again, after several days of overlaying and linking the whistle blast with the single tone, I began to phase out the whistle and eventually eliminate it entirely. And I also continued to hold the tone button down when he picked up a bumper to reinforce his understanding of the intermittent tone meaning to come when called. The training - really seemed pretty basic, and he caught onto it much more quickly than I had anticipated.

   Now I was able to run him on a leg of the lining pattern, hit the tone button, have him sit and face me so that I could cast him to another pile, and then call him in without ever blowing a whistle. But the training wasn’t done. I had worked out my initial training on land, so it was time to move to the water. And water as it so often does, would prove to be the only real hurdle in my training plan.

   You see, when the dog is swimming and the collar receiver under his neck is submerged, it is tougher, if not impossible to hear the tone! So, I cured the problem by strapping the collar so that the receiver is located on the back of his neck. It looks out of place but it works fine, and there is no question that he can hear it. Even when swimming in the river, he stops and casts in the water or on the opposite bank much more reliably than if I was blowing a whistle. If you insist on a collar that works in the water strapped underneath the dog’s neck, you might want to consider one of the collar systems with the vibrating mode rather than an - audible tone.

   There is one additional tone command that I plan to teach, but it will have to wait until the current hunting season has ended and I can find a short cover field to work in. I plan to teach him to quarter the field and change direction when he hears two whistle blasts and then link that together with two quick tones from the collar. If I can work this out, along with the tone commands that he has learned previously, I should be able to hunt a field for pheasants from end to end and never blow whistle or give a verbal command
— truly silent hunting! •