Dan travelled down from Christchurch for a 24 hour training session with his two dogs Argo and Opi. Dan is still relatively new to the sport of pig hunting so he was hoping to also learn something while he was here. This is how Dan had described his two dogs, Argo is3 ½ and a super intelligent beardie x huntaway. He’s lean and mean and likes to hold, the problem is that he is a lot faster than the other dogs he hunts with and we would like him to hold a bit less and learn to bail more to reduce the likelihood of injury when he gets to the pig first. He talks a lot but is quite on the hill, he mainly just whines when he gets let out of the box from excitement.
Opi is a 2 ½ year old Staffy / Mastiff and has only been on a few pigs. He doesn’t like being up close and personal with other dogs so will jump in and hold pigs with Argo but in a bigger group is not keen. Both dogs are stock proof.
When Dan arrived we let both dogs out to have a sniff around and get used to my dogs. I instantly liked the look of Argo, he was a good size for a hunting dog and not too muscly. Opi was quit a solid dog and looked every bit a holder.
For our first run we took Fog and Argo in to see Mr Pig, as Fog started bailing Argo ran straight in and tried to hold but could not because of the muzzle. Mr Pig threw him back a couple of times then Argo stood there and started bailing. Dan turned to me and said I’ve never heard him bail before. Within a couple of minutes I could see that we could go and get Opi to join in. As Opi approached the bail he could see Argo standing back bailing so did not even try and go in but slowly joined in at the bail which was real good to see.
Our next run we took Lightning with the two training dogs and bailed some of the younger boars. Next morning we went into the main block with three dogs this time Fog bailed up four of my younger boars. All of these boars would be around the 80 pound mark now and have only just recently started to mature so that my dogs will start taking notice of them. This was a real good bail and after 30 minutes I decided to go to my kennels and grab out another young bitch Tas that I am training up at present.
We had a real good bail going for a long time with four dogs bailing four boars. We did not manage to get out of the block after this bail as the dogs went and bailed Boris just to tucker the dogs out some more. On our last run I used my two young dogs Snow and Thunder with Argo and Opi. Once again we bailed the younger boars but this time we had just a bit too much pressure as my two young dogs were getting the boars worked up so we had to settle them down. By the time Dan left both Argo and Opi were ready for a bit of rest. These two dogs came a long way in a very short time and I would like to think that I will start seeing some photos of boars that these two dogs will be catching in the near future.