This was a whole different scenario than the first time that Snow got to see a possum. The first time he saw a possum last week, Jeff would have killed it in front of him and he would not have been able to help himself. This week I was walking the dogs up the hill before putting them away for the night. I had got 2/3rds of the way to the top of the hill when I heard Jeff bail up above me. At the time it was dark and I had no tracking/electric collars on the dogs but the moon was out so I had not bothered with a light. Snow wanted to head up to the barking but I had Lightning who is five years old standing at my side so I kept Snow in. There in the tree was a very frightened possum, with good reason. I went up to the tree and gave it a couple of shakes to dislodge the possum. As soon as the possum hit the ground Jeff had it. Both Lightning and Fog were standing behind me while Snow was going towards the action. At this stage it was very easy to say to Snow in a very serious tone (get out of that Snow) as soon as he heard my voice he stepped back to stand beside me and watch me encourage Jeff to kill the possum. While Jeff was killing the possum I called the other dogs into heal and walked back towards the track. No sooner had I got onto the track that Jeff turned up with his possum in his mouth, walking up to me and handing me his possum. I carried the possum down the track 800 meters to the dog kennels with all of the dogs following me.
Once I plucked the $10 worth of fur off the possum the dogs got to eat it along with dog biscuits for the night. This saved me having to feed them a $7 pet roll for tea. The more times that I can do this with snow the quicker he will learn that he is not allowed to show an interest in these animals. Two days after this incident I took all of the dogs for a run and Jeff went well on the possums, he would have got 5 if I had brought the 22 along with me to shoot the ones he bailed in the trees. As soon as I could see that Jeff could not get to those possums I called him into heal and carried on. The ones that Jeff got on the ground did not last too long. Snow was learning by watching how Lightning and Fog were reacting around Jeff and the possums a couple of times I had to remind Snow that he was not allowed to show an interest in these animals. I have known a lot of hunters who have made mistakes at this stage with their young dogs and had the dogs just hunting possums. This can be very frustrating for those hunters yet it is such a simple thing to train a dog either in or out of.
Remember it is just as easy to train a dog to do the wrong thing as it is to do the right thing. When we look at farmers who I believe have better control over their dogs they can have one dog doing one job and another dog doing a different job and the dogs not getting confused. When a farmer wants to move stock away from him he will use a huntaway that can make a lot of noise to keep the stock moving yet if he wants to stop the stock going away he sends a heading dog out front of the animals and brings them back to him. I have watched farmers with many dogs at their side and only get one dog to do a particular job that any of the dogs could have done. When we have pig dogs hunters tend to want their dogs to go away and catch a pig as a pack and not a team. A farmer can go out and get thousands of sheep off the hill in one day yet pig hunters tend to target one animal at a time. I understand that pigs are different than sheep but I also know that a mob of pigs would feel safer staying in a mob then split up. The reason that they split up is because dogs tend to go in with too much pressure. A sheep dog that puts on too much pressure will get a sheep to break out of the mob and as long as the dog takes the pressure back off the sheep it will go back into the mob. The same thing happens with pigs the problem is that most pig dogs don’t know how to take the pressure off. A certain amount of this comes back to breeds and the rest comes back to the training. For a dog to learn to take pressure off a pig it must first be able to think for itself. I’ve seen a lot of dogs that lose all of their senses when they get into the killing mod and don’t think about anything. To get this part of the training right we need to go right back to when we start our young dog. We need to read the dogs mind set and we also need to put the young dog into as many different learning scenarios as possible in a controlled environment. So what is happening with snow right now is getting him to be calm around another dog that is killing an animal that he himself is not allowed. To do this I only need to talk to him in a calm voice and slightly change the tone of my voice when he is showing any interest in the possum. This way he will be calm and relaxed around the possums and not worry about them. He should treat them no different than the sheep, cows or any other animal as he moves around. If any of my dogs smell a pig I don’t expect them to stop tracking when they come across another animal.
For the possum training I have one possum that has stayed in the same place for the past six months. This possum has a tight bit of scrub at the base of a cabbage tree not far from my water tank. When I take the dogs up the hill behind the house I go past this tree. It is interesting to see how Jeff reacts now to this possum as he knows it is their, sometimes he looks at me as if to say do you want me to bark at it today or not. I can make the decision for him and carry on walking past this tree when I want without him even attempting to bark at the possum. At night the possum is normally in the cabbage tree so I could easily shoot it but I can not see the point in killing this possum as he is productive in helping me to train the dogs.