Question 1

What frequency is a dog whistle?

Accepted Answer

Two families, and they sit a long way apart. The field whistles a trainer carries run from about 5.4 kHz to 12.8 kHz, which is why you can hear one perfectly well from across a park. The ones sold as ultrasonic work between roughly 23 kHz and 54 kHz, above the top of human hearing. Dogs cover both, hearing from around 67 Hz to 45 kHz, so a dog whistle frequency anywhere in that span reaches them. The dog whistle Hz numbers printed on packaging come from one family or the other, and which one you want decides where to set this page: 5,700 Hz for the audible kind, or as high as your device goes for the other.

Question 2

Can my dog actually hear this dog whistle sound?

Accepted Answer

Within the range this page reaches, yes. Dogs hear about two octaves higher than people and are most sensitive somewhere between 4 kHz and 8 kHz, so a high pitched dog whistle sits well inside what their ears are built for. Watch the dog rather than the number: ears swivelling, a head tilt, a break in whatever they were doing. That reaction tells you more than any chart will. If nothing happens at one setting, move a couple of kilohertz and try again, and leave the volume where it is. Louder is not what makes a dog look up. A pitch they are tuned for is.

Question 3

What's the highest pitch my phone or laptop can play?

Accepted Answer

Three things decide it, and only the first can be known from a web page. The audio system your browser opened runs at a fixed sample rate, and half of that is a hard mathematical limit; the line beside the frequency box shows what it works out to on the device you are using now. Under that sits the speaker or the headphones, and this is where most of the loss really happens: laptop speakers and cheap earbuds fade out somewhere between 15 kHz and 20 kHz, and no browser can measure it. So a high pitch sound for dogs at 18 kHz may leave your phone at a fraction of the level a 5 kHz one does, with nothing on screen to say so.

Question 4

Do I need a dog whistle app for this?

Accepted Answer

No. Open the page, press play, and the sound comes out. There is nothing to install, no permission to grant, no ad to sit through first and nothing to delete afterwards, and it behaves the same on a phone as on a laptop. A dog whistle app has to be downloaded and opened before it makes a noise that a browser tab makes in two seconds. One thing to check on an iPhone: the silent switch on the side mutes browser audio, so if you get nothing at all, look there first.

Question 5

Does a dog whistle to stop barking actually work?

Accepted Answer

Not reliably, and it is worth being straight about why. A sudden dog whistle noise interrupts a dog because it startles them: the barking stops for a moment while the dog works out what that was. Interrupting is not training, and dogs get used to it quickly. Directing an unpleasant sound at an animal that cannot move away from it is a welfare problem rather than a method, which is why nothing here is offered as a way to silence a dog. If it is your own dog, what changes the barking is what happens after it, and a trainer can help with that. If it is next door's dog, there is no stop dog barking sound that fixes it; that one is a conversation with the neighbour rather than an audio problem.

Question 6

Why can I hear the dog whistle myself?

Accepted Answer

Because silent whistles are not silent. Anything below about 20 kHz is inside human hearing in principle, and the audible whistles at 5 to 12 kHz are meant to be heard by the handler as much as by the dog. What changes is age: the top of your range fades through your twenties and thirties, so a tone that is obvious to a teenager in the room can be nothing at all to you. A dog whistle for humans is really just a whistle at a pitch you still have. If you want to know where your own limit sits, the Hearing Frequency Test measures it properly, one ear at a time.

Question 7

Can I download the dog whistle sound as an MP3?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Press download and you get a dog whistle sound MP3, or a WAV if you would rather have the exact one, at any length up to five minutes. Whatever is set on the page is what lands in the file, pip pattern and gaps included, so a three-pip recall signal saves as a three-pip recall signal instead of a flat tone. Your browser renders it and writes it straight to your device: nothing is uploaded, nothing waits in a queue, and there is no watermark or sign-up in the way.

Question 8

Does this work as a cat whistle?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and cats are the harder audience. A cat's hearing reaches higher than a dog's, to somewhere around 64 kHz, so the band your phone can actually produce sits well below the top of what a cat hears. Anywhere from about 15 kHz upward is worth trying. Short pips tend to land better than a steady tone, the same way a rustling bag gets a cat's attention and a constant hum does not. Set the frequency, hold the pip button for a single burst, and watch the ears. A cat whistle is the same instrument pointed at a different animal.

Question 9

How do I use the pips for recall training?

Accepted Answer

The convention most handlers use is several short pips for come here and one long note for stop or sit. The patterns here are set to exactly that: three pips of 200 ms with 200 ms between them, two pips of 250 ms, or a single note of 1,000 ms. What matters far more than the exact frequency is that the pattern is identical every time, that it always means the same thing, and that arriving is worth the dog's while when they do. Pick a pitch, write the number down so you can set the same one tomorrow, and leave it alone once the dog has learned it.

Question 10

Is a high-pitched sound harmful to dogs?

Accepted Answer

Volume and duration decide that, not pitch on its own. A tone at a comfortable level from across a room is fine; the same tone with a phone speaker against a dog's ear is not, and a high note left running for minutes is worth avoiding whether or not anyone in the room can hear it. That is why the volume here starts at 10% and why playback stops itself after the time you set, rather than running until you remember it. Keep the speaker at arm's length or further, work in short bursts, and stop if the dog looks distressed rather than curious.

Question 11

Does this record anything or upload audio?

Accepted Answer

No. It only plays sound. There is no microphone permission, no upload and nothing to send: this tool doesn't even have a server to upload to. The file you download is rendered by your own browser and saved straight to your device, and a share link carries the frequency, pattern and volume in the part of the URL that never reaches a server at all.

Play a dog whistle sound at the pitch you choose

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