One of the biggest changes I have seen in my dogs since getting Gus has been the way that Bro has stepped up his hunting. Bro would Normally go out with either Tig or Rastus but now with Gus on the hunt Bro is going much further on his own. When he hunts with Tig he knows that Tig is allowed to catch possums but Bro is not allowed so watching these two together I can instantly tell what animal they are hunting simply by seeing who is the keen one. When Bro hunts with Rastus they are focused on the Pigs but Rastus is lazy and only goes when the pigs are handy so up until recently Bro was relying on Rastus to go out but now he has stepped up and is catching more of my pigs.
On this hunt Bro tracked out 900 meters to bail the sow. It is not easy to keep three keen dogs from wanting to grab a sow of this size simply because if the sow feels threatened she is going to want to break which causes the dogs to grab, so when I’m close I need to make sure the dogs are not going to put any unnecessary pressure on the pig. While the dogs are bailing Rastus goes around behind the pig which makes the pig uneasy and could cause her to try and break so I have to tell Rastus off and get him back around the front of the sow. If we were in a situation where we had two guys trying to start a fight with us and one guy walked behind us we would move so that we could see them both.
What I want my dogs to do is calm the sow down so that she is less likely to try and break or charge. By me talking to the dogs they will understand that I don’t want them hurting this pig and while there is very little chance that one of the dogs could get hurt by holding her what they would be doing is learning a bad habit of grabbing pigs and if they are a long way away a small pig would get killed and if it were a big pig the dog could get killed.