Kiwi Dog Training February 2022
On 10 February we had three important visitors to our property – pest species dogs, Mawson, Finn and Mica who brought their owners Sandy, Graeme and Karen, to do part of their training certification. The day jobs for the dogs is to sniff out invasive species – rats and mice and weeds, but today they were doing their kiwi avoidance training. It is a requirement for all dogs in the conservation dog programme to have a current kiwi avoidence training certificate to work in areas with kiwi. It’s also recommended that any pet dogs that may go into places where kiwi live also go through the training.
Special kiwi lures were set around the pond track (only kiwi poo and a dead kiwi that had been found as roadkill) and the dogs, with electric collars, walked freely on the tracks and needed to ignore the kiwi lures, which they did successfully. Sandy King had come over from Stewart Island to lead the training and our property provided a good place where the training could be held without potential interruption from the public.
Thanks Sandy, Graeme and Karen for insights into this special world.
Chris
Posted: 17 February 2022