When Snow was about eighteen weeks old I noticed how he was starting to bail the other dogs and I could see that he was just about ready to start bailing the training boars. Up until this point I only had him in with the pigs at feeding time so he had not yet barked at them. I also noticed that about this time Snow was becoming a wee bit reluctant when coming into the pig block which was saying to me that he was starting to see them differently.
I had Paolo coming over from Taiwan to go out for a pig hunt with me, this was to be Paolo’s third trip over to see me so I thought that I would keep Snow off the pigs until he arrived in a couple of days’ time. Paolo has been following all of my articles on my web site so I knew that he would like to see Snow getting his first run on the boars. Snow did not disappoint as he followed his father Fog and bailed real well for a first time. After fifteen minutes I could see that Snow was starting to get bored so I called him out. With all of the training with a young dog it does not pay to do too much at one time.
It has been interesting watching Snow go back into the pig block without any of the other dogs as he is walking around watching the pigs and learning from them. What I want to see from Snow in the future is a dog that can happily stand close to a pig and not want to attack it but listen to my commands. Where I see a lot of young dogs getting bad training is the first time that they get to see a pig it is screaming with dogs attacking it. This will give a dog a whole different perspective of what to do on a pig compared to a dog that is standing back barking at a pig and putting no pressure on the animal.