I first meet Dave years ago when coaching my sons Geraldine rugby team as Dave was coaching the Pareora rugby team in the same age group. Dave obviously recognized me from the pig hunting magazines as the subject quickly turned from rugby to pig hunting. That was about 10 years ago now but we have run into each other at many pig hunting competitions over the years and Dave had always been keen to get a young dog up into the training block to see what I could do with it.
Dave turned up with his son Caleb and two young dogs, Star had been on about 50 pigs so far and liked to go in and hold and Goldie was picked up recently from being a town dog that had been breed as a pig dog. Dave told me that one bitch was just coming off heat and the other one was just coming on so that meant that I could only use Breeze my bitch with them for the training.
We put Goldie in one of my kennels and just took Breeze and Star for a start. All the pigs heard the bike coming so where waiting patiently at the gate for us so I first gave them a feed before letting the dogs in. This gave me time to explain to Dave and Caleb a bit about the pigs and what would happen when I let Breeze in. as I opened the gate the Black boar the ginger boar and the sow and piglets all bolted with Breeze taken off after the black boar just like I had just explained to Dave and Caleb. Breeze bailed him up further up the creek but as we where heading up there he broke down past us and then up the hill. While Breeze was doing her best to keep the black boar bailed he was still trying to break away so I decided on different approach because Star was a harder dog I wanted an easier bail so I called Breeze into heal and got her to bail the grey boars that where still waiting patiently down at the gate for us. As we got Star close to the action he wanted to get in and grab a pig so he had to be held back. Over the next five minutes Star was pulling on the rope trying to get the boars and also giving a few barks until he started wearing himself down. This was when I decided to let him off the rope as he was wearing a muzzle he could not grab a pig and he would learn by getting throwing away. Not long after letting him off the rope he put to much pressure on the boars causing them break as they chased the biggest boar. This worked out well as they stopped him up in the pine trees and the boar turned to fight the two dogs making them step back and bail. At this stage I had trouble getting any decent photos as Star was running around so fast all I could get on the camera was a blur. After a couple of minutes Star slowed down and started bailing better as when she was running around fast she had the boar turning a lot and not settling down.
While the two where bailing some how Goldie had got herself out of the kennel and turned up at the bail which was not a bad thing at this stage because Star had settled. Goldie had not been on pigs before so it was good to see her standing back a bit but also having a bark. The boar did start moving around a bit so the dogs had to get in close to stop him each time so that made them work. The boar had moved up the hill a bit before settling down to a steady bail again. By this time Star was starting to want a rest as he had used up so much energy earlier running around so much. At one point the boar broke the bail and the dogs stopped him again down in the tight scrub but then the two dogs returned to us leaving Breeze bailing on her own. We waited for a while hoping that the two dogs would go back to Breeze and resume bailing but they where happy staying with us at this point so we had to crawl down through the scrub to get the other two to join in again, which they did as we got closer. By the time we called the dogs out they had done a lot of work and would be sleeping well that night.