Mouse and Linda were in a bit of a predicament as they had recently lost one of their main dogs and there other main dog was out of action having a litter of pups. They were considering trying to buy a new main dog but soon got disheartened with this idea when they found out how hard it is to buy a good going pig dog. It was one of their friends that suggested to them to considering coming to visit me and invest in their younger dogs rather than looking elsewhere. So I received a phone call from Linda and a date was set for her partner Mouse and her with their dog Grey and their bitch Flur. These two young dogs had done a wee bit of hunting but not too much so they were hopping to give them some experience on a bigger boar. For our first run we took Lightning and Grey down to bail Mr Pig. As we entered the block Mr Pig the white sow and the little piglet were standing together when Lightning bailed up. As soon as Grey saw the sow break out he was after her and the wee piglet. Luckily for us he was wearing a muzzle and he soon returned to Lightning and Mr Pig. They were only bailing for five minutes and I could see that they were not putting too much pressure on the bail so I suggested to Mouse that we go and get Flur to let her join in as well. With the three dogs they put a wee bit of pressure on Mr Pig but he handled it well. Grey did like going around to Mr Pigs back end and trying to bite him a few time so I could see that during the training we would try and discourage this behaviour. When a pig is bailed and a dog goes behind the pig then the pig will have to move to keep facing the dog and this can cause a lot of pigs to break the bail. These two dogs started to show me that they wanted to catch pigs which is a sign that I love to see.
After this run we put the two training dogs into their dog box for a rest while we went up to the top of the hill on the four wheeler with two of my dogs Jeff the possum dog and Snow my pup. On the way up while we were stopped Mouse spotted one of my pigs Arnold across on the middle face Jeff had also seen him so I sent him across to bail Arnold up. Once Jeff bailed I sent Snow over to the bail and was pleased to see that he went two hundred meters out to help Jeff with the bail. I managed to get some good footage of the dogs bailing form above. Arnold broke three times before he got out of sight under the pine trees so I called both dogs off without any electric collars from about four hundred meters away. As we carried on back down to the house Jeff picked up the scent of a possum so we turned the bike off and did not have to wait very long until we heard Jeff giving a possum the death grip. Linda was very impressed when she saw Jeff retrieve his possum right back to me. This helped to feed the dogs for the night.
For our next run we took Fog with the two training dogs and we got them onto Boris. This was a good run as Boris did not want to sit still and kept trying to move, this was great to keep the dogs interested as they kept onto him for the next hour. We walked back to the house just before dark to a nice warm house as my wife Janice had the fire going and cooked us a fabulous meal. After tea we sat around having a quite drink and a good yarn to get to know each other better. Linda is very much into horses and likes show jumping, she said that she can see a lot of similarities between dogs and horses. In the morning Linda and Mouse commented on how nice the wee hut was to stay in while we had breakfast.
For today’s run I thought we would try with just Flur and Grey as I thought they had done enough yesterday to make me think they could work on their own today. When we entered the main block the big lazy fella Digger was standing there so I grabbed him by the tail so that he would growl at me this got the two dogs giving a few barks. As Grey tried to get around by his back end a picked up a long cabbage tree leaf and every time that Grey came in from behind I raised my hand with the leaf so that he went back to Digger’s front end. We only played this game for a short time before we decided to head a bit higher up the hill to get into the sun shine that was up there. As we were standing around admiring the view Linda spotted the black and white boar on the opposite face so we started making our way in his direction. He was well onto us though and moved off before we got too far. As we were just about in the bottom of the gully both dogs hit some other pig that we had not yet seen. The dogs broke all the way back towards the house with a few barks going on but then returned to us. As it turned out it would have been the smaller pigs that are around the fifty pound mark so I was quite happy that they came off them. As we got the dogs back on track after the black and white boar they tracked off slowly up above us and started bailing. When we arrived we discovered that they had actually bailed Boris again and they were doing a great job. Every time we got close Boris would break but if we stayed back a bit they would keep him in the same place until we approached again. At one point Linda and I had split up from Mouse so we walked up to the house and sat down to a cuppa with cheese and crackers while we listened to the dogs bailing 45 minutes later Mouse turned up and joined us. When we finally went up the hill on the four wheeler to call the two dogs off they had been bailing Boris for over three hours. They were not barking anywhere near as much as they were when they started but they had done a brilliant job and both dogs came off when called form four hundred meters away.
Because the dogs had had such a big run I took Linda and Mouse for a ride to the waterfall which looked just stunning with a lot of frozen ice on the sides. I also took Jeff with us just to prove to Mouse and Linda that it was no fluke with Jeff getting a possum. As we left the waterfall Jeff got his first possum which Linda filmed him carrying it back to me. From here we went to visit one of my neighbors Craig who loves growing all sorts of plants which they were interested in. Also Craig showed them his rocket mass heater that keeps his hut nice and warm even though he has snow on the ground outside. By the time we left Craig’s, Jeff had caught another two possums.
When Mouse and Linda were about to leave on their trip back to Nelson they were already talking about their next trip to visit. Christ I love my job, two days ago I had not meet Mouse and Linda and now I feel like not only have I meet two more hunters and helped with the development of their dogs but I have also made two new friends. Their two young dogs will step up to being main dogs in no time at all.