I have had a few guys through the block lately giving their dogs some extra work over the summer months. One chap, Phil Williams from Christchurch traveled down twice with two of his dogs. Smudge and Zeek, both of these dogs had been following Phil around on the hill and leaving the finding to Phil’s other main dog. Both dogs were well behaved and it did not take to long before we had them both off the rope so that they could get in amongst the boars. Phil had described Zeek as a lazy dog that just did not want to go out and do much hunting instead preferring to just follow him around and wait for another dog to find the pigs. Because Phil was coming back in a couple of days time for another run with his dogs I suggested that he keep Zeek in a kennel rather than letting him run around all day. What I have seen in the past is a dog that is not in a kennel very often does not have the same drive to go out and hunt as a dog that has been stuck in a kennel.
When Phil came back the second time we could see a change in Zeek and we took just his two dogs into the block with out any of mine. We had made it right up to the top of the block when we saw the new boar breaking out on the opposite face. We both got to watch as Zeek and Smudge tracked away after him and put up a good bail. The boar did not stay around for to long though and we watched as he tried breaking from the two dogs. They both done a good job of stopping him each time. This boar ended up breaking back across to the side we were standing on and ran right though beside us. The dogs stayed on him for a while until he broke down to the bottom of the block five hundred meters away where he managed to give the dogs the slip. It is a great feeling to watch two dogs progress so much with only two two hour sessions.