Jed at the early stages of his training
Shane is a truck driver for main freight out of Cromwell and he hunts with Peter Lewis who came in a couple of days ago with his two dogs Jade and Gaz. Shane was bringing in two of his dogs but at the last minute one of his bitches came on heat so he only brought in one of his dogs, Jed and instead of his bitch he brought Peters dog Gaz back for another run. For our first run we were taking Breeze and Jed and I quickly got to find out just how much work I had ahead of me with this dog. Jed is around three years old and has been hunting all of his life. Up untill now he has grabbed every pig that he has caught but has not been catching pigs over 100 pounds. As soon as we got Jed into the block he just went crazy on the end of the rope so he had to be settled down so that he knew who was the boss. Normally this is just a mater of putting the dog on their side on the ground with the trainer on top of them but Jed was a real squirmer and made it hard work to keep him down. Once we got him to a bail it was easy to see why he was not catching the big boars as he just wanted to go straight in for the fight. Finally we managed to break him. What made things so hard was that he was three years old if he was younger he would not have been so set in his ways and would have been easier to change. When ever a pig was running he was keen to chase it but when a pig was stopped he just wanted to go in and grab but with the rope and muzzle on him he could not get in to grab. Once he realized that he could not grab the pig he sat down and sulked.
For our next run we took Lightning, Jed and Gaz. When Gaz was last in he was bailing not to bad but just not staying at the bail. He enjoyed it when a pig would break and was doing well at sticking with them and bailing them but just not staying for long once they were bailed. I was hoping that having more dogs in their that Jed might be more likely to want to bark. We ended up bailing the ginger boar in the tight stuff. This got Jed to start giving a couple of barks and just prior to dark we let Jed off the rope. With out the security of the rope to hold him back he did not go in as hard as he had been when he had the rope on.
Next morning we took Lightning with Gaz and Jed. The pigs were waiting for us hoping to get a feed and when we put the dogs in the pigs did not want to break away rather they felt their safety was in numbers. We had to get in amongst them to get some of them to break down the fence line which got the dogs doing a bit of barking. Even though Jed was still not in their all the time he was starting to do a bit more baking and with out the rope as he was standing back a bit more.
On our last run I used two of my dogs, Breeze and Fog hoping that with the extra dog might get Jed to step up a bit more. The dogs had a fair work out this time as over the next two hours we had three different boars bailed up. The first black and white boar gave them the run around until I felt that he deserved a rest. Next we where onto the main boar and he had the dogs showing him plenty of respect. Each time he broke the dogs would take off ofter him and we would wait back until one or both of the training dogs came back to us then we would walk them back into the bail. The last grey boar was also big enough that his size meant the dogs showed him a lot of respect.