They came to me to give one of there dogs (Blade) some extra training. As you can see it was a good days training as we caught this 141 pound boar and I have kept Blade for the next month to teach him some of the finer points of pig hunting. The problem that they are having with Blade is a common one, he is a good finder but he is having trouble stopping the big pigs. We got to see first hand on this boar why he is loosing the big pigs as he is so keen that he just wants to go in and grab which is breaking the big pigs. Over the next month I will be teaching Blade to be confident around pigs so that he can learn to work pigs rather than attack them.
Update:
I had Blade for six weeks. When Craig and Campbell came to drop him off we went out for a hunt and caught a 141 pound boar. Blade had the ability to find well but could not pull up the big pigs.
I spent four weeks putting Blade in with smaller pigs and taught him not to attack, when I thought he was ready I took him out for a hunt with just Cloud and caught a 136 pound boar with a client from Scotland, Dave La rooy. Blade’s next hunt he found and bailed a 112 pound boar for two minutes on his own until Cloud arrived then Breeze. His next hunt Cloud found and bailed a 110 pound boar until Blade arrived and joined in. At this point I new that Blade was ready to go back to his owners. A week later I was rapt to get an email from Craig with a photo of two good boars with nice jaws that Blade had caught for them, 125 pounds and 140 pounds. A couple of days later and there is another photo of a nice 120 pound boar and a note saying that since Blade has returned he seems to be hunting with much more confidence and catching some real good pigs.