George Bright with dogs Storm, Scar and Zuke

This was George’s second time up to the training block, last time he came up to drop off Boris the large grey boar in the block. This time he had three dogs with him, a five year old dog Storm who belonged to a mate of his. A three year old dog Scar who had been in before and features of the cover of the Hooked on Boars magazine issue 43 along with George’s girl friend Ashleigh Sergent. Last dog was Zuke who was only twenty eight weeks old.

Zuke was the main reason for George’s visit as he wanted to start him on a good pig rather than have him trying to grab smaller pigs. For our first run we went into the smaller block with Mr Pig and the black and white boar. I was using Fog as the main dog for this run along with Scar and Zuke. Mr Pig was waiting at the fence for us so I sent Fog away past him to go and bail the black and white boar. Fog and Scar put a bit of pressure on him and chased him down to the far end of the block. When we went in with Zuke I could tell that he had not done much with pigs before as he did not want to get in towards the action.

The most we got out of him was a couple of barks.
On our second run we went into the main block with Lightning, Storm and Zuke. As soon as we entered the block Storm took of after the sow down into the gully and started bailing. Luckily he did not stay to long and came back up to us. Next we bailed Digger which worked out good for Zuke as his confidence started to pick up a bit. Digger is a big pussy when it comes to dogs and does not know how to fight dogs so I make sure that all dogs that get onto him are wearing a muzzle so they don’t hurt him. Digger has the size as he is well over two hundred pounds but he does not have the fight. Because I know this I use him for his size to intimidate a dog so they learn to stand back with out them getting hurt. I could see Zuke starting to become more confident with Digger. Once I felt Digger had had enough I called the dogs in and we went for a walk.

Next the dogs got onto Boris and had a fare old run around. What was happening is the dog’s were just not standing back and giving him the room that he needed to stop and bail. We started seeing little bites of keenness from Zuke as he would follow the other dogs and pig. Storm had proving his ability in finding and sticking with a pig but he did have one down side and that was his keenness to get in to close to the pig and not stand back and give the pig enough room to stop and bail. Next morning we just took George’s three dogs into the block. This does not happen very often as I normally get dogs in that don’t know to much about hunting but with Storm I could see a dog that could find and stick with a pig. Scar on the other hand was a big strong looking dog that looked like he could pull down an elephant but I had seen him the last time that he was in and knew that he was quite happy to stand back and bail. As we entered the block the dog’s bailed the white boar and Digger up by the fence out in the open which gave us a chance to watch Zuke and encourage him to join in. This first run of the next day is always the one that makes the difference with any new young dog as he would have been in the kennel all night thinking about those pigs. Finally the white boar broke the bail and headed down into the gully with the three dogs behind. Zuke was quick to return but Storm and Scar put a nice bail up down in the creek. The dog’s had this boar bailed here for forty five minutes before he finally broke down the gully with all three dogs in hot pursuit. We did not leave the dogs on him to long at the next bail as they all needed a break.

For the next run I suggested to George that we just stand around inside the block and wait for the dogs to start looking around. It took them a while but finally they started getting bored with us and wanted to start sniffing. Storm and Scar were just down below us when Boris and the white sow came walking down the fence line. George was rapt to see young Zuke walk up towards them and bark. This had the other two dogs back pretty quick.
Boris took off down towards the creek and he just kept on moving around the block not wanting to bail in one place for to long. Because he kept moving I decided to take the muzzle off Storm. He was quick to latch onto Boris’s arse which kept him moving and he still did not want to stop. This just proved to me once again that it is not the bite that stops pigs it is more about how the dog goes about stopping the pig. After chasing him around for an hour the dogs and Boris were getting tired so we took them out for a rest.

For our last run we took two of my dogs Fog, Thunder and Zuke. On this run we ran into Boris again and got a chance to give Zuke a good go at bailing on his own. I was rapt to see how much we had changed with Zuke in such a short time, he had gone from a dog that knew nothing about barking at a pig to being right in a pigs face barking his head off in twenty four hours.