Blaze was described by Keiran as quite a hard dog as he preferred to hold his pigs. On our first run with Blaze and Fog we went into the small block and put them onto the black and white boar. Blaze did manage to pull his muzzle half off so that the top part of it was in his mouth which gave him the chance to half bit the pig. On the small piece of footage that I filmed you can see how Blaze is putting a lot of pressure on the boar which is forcing him to run until he tries to turn back on Blaze. This is a problem that I see with a lot of dogs not knowing when to take the pressure off the pig to allow it to stand and bail.
For our second run a wanted to put Blaze into the main block onto the white boar to teach him to stand back and bail as the white boar does not take any shit from a dog and he forces them all to stand back and bark. When we first entered the block the dogs went down into the gully looking for the pigs and we could hear Blaze having a great time getting in amongst the sow and smaller pigs. Blaze had not had an electric collar on before that I knew of but he did respond to the noise button and start coming back up towards us. Meanwhile Fog had tracked back up towards us to where the white boar was hiding. As Fog closed in the white boar broke up the gully where Fog bailed him in the creek. Once Blaze arrived he did not stay there for to long before coming back to us. He was not a pretty sight as he had coped a poke in the front leg that did not look to good. We did take him down to the bail but he did not want anything to do with this boar any more. So we called Fog into heal and headed back to the house to put some staples into Blaze. It really annoys me when I get an injury on either a dog or a pig as I like the at the end of a training session to have no injuries other than a couple of bumps and bruises.
So with Blaze out of action we took Tess down to the small block with Lightning and Thunder. It was straight forward to get the black and white boar bailed and it took a bit to get Tess to join in. what was interesting was that when Thunder would bark at the boar Tess would join in but when he came off she would come off also. On our next run with the same boar I brought in Fog and Lightning and we had a good run around as we watched Tess’s confidence start to grow.