[John Farrell, Charter Member #33]

I walk my dogs down in the river bottoms south of my house. The woods are a vast area and occasionally one of the dogs gets out of sight. For years I would call, blow the whistle, hit the e collar return buzzer signal. All to no avail. One of the dogs was also lost for a full night.

I happened upon a trick several years ago by accident. I was trying to locate a lost dog in thick cover and called repeatedly. I had a pretty bad cold and cough at the time. While calling I saw the dog in the distance and called just as I started to cough, for the thousandth time I think. My hand was near my mouth and I thought I muffled the dog's name. The dog heard me and spun around to face where I was standing. Thinking fast, I repeated the action of covering my face with a cupped hand and called again. The call is directed downward from the hand cover. The dog came to me like it was on a string.

Now, all of my dogs are trained to the voice command as I cup my hand between the lip and nose and call the dog. The call emanates from my position and not from 360 degrees where the dog cannot zone in on the sound. It works with a bare hand or a gloved hand. Try it sometime.