I have a 6 month old boy going to a pet/hunting home. His obedience is great and he fetches from the ground and returns to hand. I'd like to teach him to sit at a distance to whistle as I really enjoy doing obedience and think this will be helpful for new hunting family. How is this taught in a humane way?

Teach the whistle sit with the dog near you first. Assuming he knows the sit command very well already. Give the whistle signal, usually one long blast, then the sit command, if you do this enough times he will associate the two and start sitting on the whistle alone. I would reward with praise and a treat for the sit. If he doesn't sit then place him in a sit and he gets no treat. The other thing he needs to be doing is a sit at a distance on the sit command, before you replace the command with a whistle. Do this just by gradually building distance from right beside you, to a foot away, to three foot away... The dog should remain sitting while you walk out to reward him. I practice remote sits on off lead walks after they have the idea.

Sounds a little simplistic but it's what I did.

If the hunting home is experienced with training, they may not want you to do whistle training though, might confuse the dog if they use a different sound.

What a great & fun idea to try with our youngest boy! Tks!

Laurel has given you some really good advice. I can add a couple of things that help me. Start your training in a low distraction environment. I actually start teaching a sit in a crate (giving treats high and at the back of the crate). I add distractions outside the crate--balls rolling by, me across the room, food lying outside the crate. Whenever the dog chooses to stay in the sit in the crate, I reward with food.

Then I move the sit outside the crate but a low distraction environment (my training area of the house), then outside, then outside with lots of distractions, etc.

I like to build speed and duration of the behavior (in the face of distactions) before I add a cue. If you add the cue before you have a speedy sit with duration at a distance in the face of distractions, your cue will be associated with behaviors you won't want to live with (e.g., slow sit, quick release, etc.).

Finally, be generous with rewards and have fun with your dog. Training should resemble play. So takes lots of breaks to play with your dog during the training--keeps them motivated.

If you teach "sit to whistle" you should also teach "come in to the whistle",, since the whistled "sit" is a preliminary response to prepare for the next command. One thing at a time, but the dog should sit promptly and attentively, as he is coming briskly in toward you, when you give the whistle. Once this is accomplished with reliability, then you should teach the whistle in. The purpose of teaching sit to the whistle is so the dog sits immediately and faces you with his full attention while waiting for the next command (which could be an "over", an angled "back", a left or right "back", or a whistle in).

If the dog knows how to sit by command, you can start using your hand when you say sit... when the dog knows that you can only use your hand for the sit command and add the whistle to it and in the end you can skip using the hand and only use your whistle ;)

To be clear, the "sit" whistle is one long whistle, as in "tweeeeeeeeeeet!" The "come" whistle is multiple short whistles, like "tweet tweet tweet" in rapid succession.

Learning to handle for hunt test work can be fun and can be done WITHOUT shock collars.