Both Hamish and Jay travelled up from Dunedin with a young bitch each. Hamish’s young bitch Soraya was only seven months old, she was the first to get up into the block with Breeze. It took about five minutes to get her to bark at the two grey boars that we had. I could tell that she was not going to attack the pigs so I got Jay to go down and collect his dog Gump so she to could join in. It took five minutes before we got a bark out of Gump and both dogs were not to keen to get in to close as they left that for Breeze. We did get the boars to break and Breeze followed them around for a while but we could not get Soraya or Gump worked up enough to want to get in to close.
For our next run I took just Fog with Soraya and Gump up to a place where I put food over the fence for the pigs. Once all of the pigs turned up we put the three dogs in but none of them, not even Fog wanted to bark so I shot back down to the dog kennels and grabbed Lightning. As soon as I put Lightning into the block the pigs wanted to break but both Lightning and Fog did not put to much pressure on them and managed to keep them all bailed up in two mobs beside the fence not far away. It was good for us as we could relax with a beer in hand and watch the dogs bailing. There was only one problem and that was we could not get Gimp or Soraya to join in. They may have felt intimidated by too many pigs. In the end it was just getting to dark to see so called it a night.
Because of the way that our first two runs had turned out I decided that in the morning I would only take one of the training dogs at a time because when we had the two of them they could come off the pig and still be together. With only taking one at a time they would have to join in on the fun of bailing or be on their own. For our first run of the day we took Lightning Breeze and Soraya. We hit the ginger boar and he put in a good bail with a few breaks and we did get Soraya to bark at the boar but she was still very stand offish which I think has a lot to do with her age. Hamish has assured me that he wants to bring Soraya back when she is a bit older so I am looking forward to see how much better she will be with a bit more age.
For our last run we took Fog, Breeze and Gump. We got onto the black and white boar and the dogs had him bailed well in some thick stuff until Jay got close to him then he broke down into the creek. When they were in the creek they had a good bail going and Gump was starting to get in their and have a bark. At one point I called Breeze and Fog out hopping that Gump would stay and bail on her own but as soon as my two came out she went quite so I put my dogs back in. After this the boar started breaking the bail and every time Jay got to close to him he would bolt only to be bailed a bit further on. I thought this would have been good for Gump but she started losing interest in the boar rather than wanting to chase him.
I think like Soraya, Gump is also just a bit young just yet. All dogs come on at different ages some will want to chase pigs as soon as they are able to run and others will take a bit longer. There are a lot of pig hunters that get rid of a dog at the early stages because they don’t see the dog doing the things they want it to do straight away. A good pig dog can be hunting up until it is fourteen years old so if it takes the dog until it is eleven months old before it starts chasing pigs then in the over all picture it is not that long to wait and work with the dog.