Mr Pig

Mr. Pig was to be my second pet wild boar. Unlike my first pet wild boar I was now armed with a lot more knowledge of how to train a wild pig. For anybody that thinks that you can not train a wild animal you are only limiting your ability to learn.

Mr. Pig was caught as a piglet and raised with my dogs, I saw this as good training for both my dogs and Mr. Pig. Whenever I took the dogs for a walk to the river Mr. Pig would also come along. Down at the river there were no fences and a lot of bush so if Mr. Pig ever wanted to run away he always had the opportunity to do so but because he believed that he was just one of the dogs he had no desire to run away. One day while at home a couple of hunters stopped in for a yarn. One of these hunters told me a story of how they got a small pig. Put it into a cage then got there dogs worked up on the pig before releasing it for the dogs to kill. They then praised there dogs as they believed this would give there dogs a taste for hunting and they would catch more pigs. I did mention to them that I would love to see a farmer let his dogs kill a lamb to teach there dogs to work sheep. When these guys saw Mr. Pig running around with my dogs they said you had better watch out or those dogs will kill that pig. Over the years I have meet a lot of hunters who think the same way as these two guys. That a dog has to attack a pig to stop it and that any pig they see they should try and kill. If I was to only focus on my dogs I would only be looking at fifty percent of what is happening. Creating the right environment with the dogs and Mr Pig I could see 100% of what was happening. Pigs, dogs and people are all capable of having a nice side and a nasty side. It all depends on how a certain situation pans out as to how the outcome will end up. If I was to go up to someone and act aggressively I would expect to get an aggressive response. Yet if I approached that same person in a calm manner I would expect a calm response. When we look at this same situation with pigs, they will have there own hierarchy. There will be a top boar, a second boar and so on down the pecking order. If the top boar wants something the other pigs will step aside and allow him right of way. If the second boar wants something all other pigs will step aside apart from the top boar and so on down the pecking order. When we mix dogs and pigs together the dogs need to be at the top of that pecking order. A well trained dog will know what its master wants and not target small pigs. On big pigs a dog does not need to attack as that only makes the dogs job harder. Big pigs work out very quickly that to turn there back on a dog they will be biting on the nuts, but to stand and face the dog they will be OK.

When Mr. Pig was very young he would like to play with my dogs and the dogs knew that he was no threat to them so they would only push him with there nose. At this stage my dogs where doing a lot of hunting and catching me a lot of pork yet I knew that they would be safe around Mr. Pig.

As Mr. Pig started growing bigger he became the instagater of any trouble. When home from a successful hunt Mr. Pig would come and see what I had caught. He would hang around with the dogs while I skinned and boned the pig out. When boning out the pigs I would throw the dogs and Mr. Pig a bone, the dogs would sit down and chew on theirs while Mr. Pig would just play with his for a while then go over to one of the dogs and try to steal there bone he was very persistent and when he finally got the bone off the dog he would drop that bone then go to another dog and repeat the process. Once he had been around all of the dogs he would come over to me and knock over the bucket that I was using for the dog bones. Once he got to about fifty pounds the dogs decided that they where no longer going to let Mr. Pig take there bones away. At this stage it was good to see how the whole situation was being turned around as the dogs where not using any more pressure than they needed to, all they had to do was become very aggressive, they where not biting Mr. Pig, they where just letting him know his place.

Trying to train Mr. Pig commands was not easy as he preferred to do what he wanted to. However I could get him to lie down stand up on his back legs and come to me which he will still do today. Getting him to stay was impossible.

The first year of training any animal is very important as to how that animal will turn out later in life. The last thing that I would want is a situation that I could not control so when I have dogs bailing Mr. Pig I do not have to worry about the pig trying to attack me.

As Mr. Pig kept growing I got to learn a lot about those situations out there on the hill that we don’t normally get to see.

When Mr. Pig was under fifty pounds any pig dog could have come along and killed him very quickly. As he kept growing he became very persistent at annoying the dogs so there bailing became so much more aggressive. In this situation Mr. Pig would be charging the dogs all the time trying to fight with them and the dogs would be trying to bite Mr. Pig on the nuts at any chance that they could causing Mr. Pig to be spinning around a lot to protect himself while looking for something to back up to. When Mr. Pig was between fifty to one hundred pounds the dogs could force Mr. Pig to back up to something to protect his nuts with hardly any danger to themselves as Mr. Pig had yet to mature and he did not have any tusks to protect himself. From one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds can be the start of the dangerous stage as now Mr. Pig has the weight and the tusks to defend himself. If I was to compare Mr. Pig to a person at this stage I would say he would be like sixteen to twenty year old. Down the street on a Friday night full of booze thinking he could take on the world, a very deadly cocktail as this guy might win his fear shear of fights yet if he was to come up against someone that new how to look after themselves the result could be disastrous. A dog at this stage would be between one to two years old, full of go yet lacking experience. With Mr. Pig at this stage if the average pack of bailer/holder dogs got onto a similar sized pig in the wild the dogs would quite likely sustain a number of injuries because the dogs would be used to holding smaller pigs so that first encounter is going to depend on how well that pig can fight and how tough the pack of dogs are as to weather you are going to end up with a bailing or holding situation. When Mr. Pig was at this stage I had two whistles one to get the dogs to bail him and one to stop the dogs from bailing. When I whistled the stop bail Mr. Pig would walk up to me with the dogs and I could pat them all together because they all looked at it as one big game. Things where about to change and this was to be the biggest change in Mr. Pig to date MATURITY.

Before I explain Mr. Pig’s maturity I want to explain a story that my brother in law told me. He teaches young children karate and he said how these young kids come along every week and go through the moves. Some of these kids might be doing this for a couple of years then over a very short period of time everything just starts to click. All of a sudden they are looking much more coordinated and thinking ahead (they are maturing).

Mr. Pig was about two and a half when he hit maturity and everything changed in a very short space of time. No longer did he try and charge dogs or fight with dogs. When I gave my whistle for the dogs to bail, Mr. Pig would head straight for a fence or hedge and wait for the dogs to come to him. Any dog making one wrong move, like approaching from the side to close Mr. Pig would nail the dog against what ever it was that he was backed up to and the dog would pay dearly for there mistake. There was no more chasing dogs around anymore. Mr Pig started taken his toll on any dog that made a mistake. As long as a dog stood back and bailed they would be OK but as soon as they tried to go in for a fight it would be over in seconds with me or the vets having to fix up another dog. One of the last time I let someone else put there three dogs on Mr. Pig every thing was OK with one dog . Things where still alright with the second dog but when the third dog joined in the first dog thought he could beat Mr Pig, he opened that dogs up four times in a quick flick of the head.

For any hunter that gets onto a pig like this in the wild with dogs that want to fight with the pig will probably end up with one of those story's about the dog killing boar.

Mr Pig is now seven years old, weighs over 200 pounds and his tusks are well in excess of four inches on each side. He lives in a half acre block twenty meters from my kitchen window. His block extends out behind my dog kennels, so the dogs get to see him every day. Mr Pig is now retired as my pet.

Pic 1 Mr pig trusts me completely
Pic 2 The dogs bailing Mr Pig in a controlled situation.
Pic 3 Mr Pig sniffing a 201 pound boar.
Pic 4 The dogs have a rest while I pat Mr Pig.
Pic 5 Mr Pig, Storm, Fly and a 111 pound boar.
Pic 6 Mr Pig with our pet cat Cheta.
Pic 7 Mr Pig on his way to the river in the middle of winter.

Pic 8 Mr Pig at the river with Storm and Fly

Happy Hunting

Bill Westwood