Paul is from North Canterbury and came to me with two dogs. Bonnie is two years old and Tahi who is four years old. For our first run we took Breeze Bonnie and my young pup Thunder. The dogs had a good bail going down in the creek and it did not take long before we had the rope off Bonnie. I quickly took a shine to this Dog as she was easy to train and she was really enjoying herself. What did surprise me on this run was Thunder as he is only starting to be allowed into the block because he is only just over four months old yet he is a natural and it won’t take long before I will be able to use him as the training Dog in the block. Pauls other Dog was a lot different from Bonnie as she did not give much away. When Paul first arrived he let his dogs out with mine and Tahi was one of those dogs that liked to growl at other dogs. Paul had said that he has never heard her bail a pig as she will only hold. If another Dog bailed a pig she would walk with Paul to the bail if a Dog grabbed a pig and it squealed she would run down and join in.Up until know though Tahi has only been catching pigs up to sixty pounds and she grabs them over the back of the neck. So with the muzzle on and on a rope we took her along with Breeze and Thunder to where I feed the pigs. Expecting Tahi to want to have a go at the pigs we were a bit disappointed as she just wanted to hide behind Paul.
To stop her from getting in behind him we tied her to the fence right beside the pigs on the other side of the wire. While Breeze and Thunder were making a lot of noise Tahi would not do a thing. Even when we put Tahi in with the pigs and took her off the rope she still only wanted to stand behind Paul. I decided that I had better try a different approach so I went don to the kennels and swapped Breeze and Thunder for Lightning and Bonnie hoping that they would work things up a bit more to encourage Taho to join in. We managed to get the ginger boar out on his own down in the creek with both Lightning and Bonnie bailing well but still all Tahi wanted to do was follow Paul. Every time the boar charged one of the dogs or tried to break Tahi would run in if the boar charged she would come running back to Paul, if the boar stopped and bailed she might give a bark or two before coming back. What I was seeing was not a holding Dog but a Dog that was scared of pigs but did not mind beating up the wee follows. My guess is that Tahi may have got a bit if a hiding off a boar at a young age and never got over it making her boar shy. At this stage of her training with me she was still at the early stage as we still had a few more hours of bailing ahead of us so I was hoping that she would start to gain her confidence.
Next morning we took Fog Bonnie and Tahi and walked most of the way up the right side of the block with Fog tracking off into the gully then up the opposite face and into the far corner of the block. I know that Paul was very impressed with Fog’s finding ability. When he confronted the pigs we could her them from were we where standing a couple of hundred meters away. First we could her the pigs starting to grunt and make a bit of noise as an intruder had entered their area. Thirty seconds after they started grunting Fog gave one bark then thirty seconds later a second bark. What he was doing was settling the pigs down before he started making a lot of noise, which is less likely to break a pig. I could see on the GPS as Bonnie arrived and joined in on the bail but once Tahi sat at our feet. We left the two dogs bailing for a couple of minutes before we thought we had better get Tahi over their to see if we could get her to join in. As we were part way across Bonnie came off the bail and came back looking for Paul. When she caught up with us we were still seventy meters off Fog’s bail. As we were closing in we ran into the other pigs and both Bonnie and Tahi were of after the smaller ones. Luckily they did not catch up to them and we got the two dogs up to where Fog had the main boar bailed up. As he broke a couple of times Tahi did start to give a few barks and was getting a bit closer to the boar but was still making sure that she was in a safe place far enough back just in case he charged. During this run we did get Tahi to bark a bit more but she still had a long way to go. For our last run I was going to try just using Bonnie Tahi and Thunder to get Paul’s two dogs to do a bit more of the work. While the pigs were right there in front of us the dogs just could not keep them there. When a pig would break Tahi would go twenty meters through the bush before coming back, Bonnie would go out to seventy meters and Thunder went right across the block out to 165 meters on his own.
The reason that Thunder was going so far on his own even though he is only just over four months old is that every other time he has been in the block he has always been with another Dog that has stopped the pig so he expects the pig to be stopped if he just keeps chasing. I did not muck around to long with just these three dogs as I went down and swapped Thunder for Breeze to give us one Dog that will stop and bail the pigs as their was no point in just chasing them around. With this change Bonnie seemed more confident, put a lot more effort in and stayed at the bail with Breeze.
Summing up, Tahi at four years old should be doing a lot more work than she is. Bonnie needs more work but has the ability to be a good Dog with work and what Paul needs now is another young Dog to bring on to go with Bonnie and maybe look at giving Tahi away as a pet. The biggest problem with Tahi is she just did not get the work she needed when she was younger and full of enthusiasm and now the work required to get her to step up would be a lot more work than starting a new pup.