The dog whisperer saving our kiwi

Willy Marsh understands dogs better than he does humans. That is why they call him the dog whisperer. writes.

Willy Marsh parks up his ute in the sun-dappled Kaitoke bush on a warm summer’s morning. His cargo; a pile of brown kiwi. Not the real national bird, of course, rather a tribe of kiwi made out of fabric. Props for his work.

Marsh, a kiwi aversion dog trainer, ambles into the bush with the gait of a cowboy and the presence of a dog whisperer to set up a course designed to deter dogs from killing kiwi.

Tapping into the dog’s main three senses – smell, sight and sound – he deposits the birds, some scented with the kiwi’s actual smell, around a small area. A few are stuck onto rudimentary contraptions that make the birds move. A soundscape of kiwi calls sing out from the top of the course.

Marsh (Tūhoe) is ready for his first student.

Weka, a sixmonth-old mongrel, lets him put on the collar that will give her a short vibration when she gets her first whiff of kiwi. That should do it, says Marsh, 70, who has been in the kiwi aversion training business for 19 years.

For the most part, the dogs avoid the kiwi after the first vibration, he says.

If a dog continues to show interest they get a short shock through the collar, but Marsh likes to avoid this if possible.

Ten minutes later Weka is suitably kiwi averse. With one vibration after sniffing the first ‘‘kiwi’’ tucked into a log she avoided all others on the course, dodging the birds and sticking close to her owner, Cole Ritchie.

‘‘He’s awesome,’’ says Ritchie, a hunter working for conservation and wildlife management service Trap and Trigger, who extols Marsh’s virtues as a trainer. ‘‘He’s not too hard on the dogs. ‘‘He knows how to treat them.’’ Ritchie is one of several stubbywearing hunters who have brought their dogs to be trained in kiwi avoidance. Any Department of Conservation (DOC)-contracted hunter is required to have their dog go through the course and be certified. At the end of each course – a brief 15-minute blat through the bush – the paperwork is done and the dogs are good to go.

The hunters who brought their charges to the session in Upper Hutt’s Kaitoke Regional Park reckon Marsh has a pretty special connection to dogs. Most hunters’ dogs won’t let anyone else put a collar on them, but Marsh has no problem. The dogs submit willingly.

Thomas Pryer, another hunter from Trap and Trigger, brought his pig dogs up to Kaitoke for training.

He’s used Marsh before a couple of years back. His method is spot on, he says.

‘‘My dogs haven’t grabbed a kiwi yet, so it works.

‘‘It’s good working with Willy. And he’s full of good yarns. He always has a story to tell.’’

Kiwi aversion for dogs is incredibly important, says Marsh, who is one of about 30 trainers in Aotearoa.

Given Capital Kiwi’s project to populate a predator-free area in the Mākara hills with 250 kiwi eventually being released onto 23,000 hectares of land from Red Rocks to west of Porirua over the next six years, it’s particularly relevant in Wellington.

‘‘[Kiwi] are our taonga. That’s the bird that identifies us to the rest of the world.’’

Abby Wutzler put her dog, Lisa, through the kiwi aversion course last year. Her work trapping stoats for Capital Kiwi and living rurally in Mākara made the decision to educate Lisa a no-brainer.

‘‘There’s a lot of open space, bush and off-lead areas where I live. With kiwi returning to the area I thought it was important to make sure I play my part in keeping the little guys safe.’’

Marsh taught her a thing or two about her own dog, a 9-year-old huntaway cross, she says. ‘‘He’s a master of his craft. He has so much information. Just from looking at Lisa – her paws, the structure of her bones – he could tell me so much about her personality, her habits, her behaviours.’’

One vibration after her first smell of the bird was enough to convince her to stay away from the rest of the ‘‘kiwi’’, says Wutzler.

Kiwi aversion training is just one of the tools in the kit to keep our kiwi safe from dogs. The training is not a silver bullet. Kiwi awareness is also keeping your dog in at night, keeping it on a lead where required, reporting if it goes missing.

Marsh, who puts 1100 dogs through the course each year, trains domestic dogs too. They are a different kettle of fish, he says. That’s because of their owners, he says with a laugh.

Marsh was raised around Waikaremoana and dogs have been a part of his life for as long as he can remember. ‘‘My grandfather, my father, and my uncles used to hunt for pigs, deer.’’

He got his first dog at 14. A bull terrier he called Gog because the kid next-door couldn’t pronounce ‘‘dog’’.

‘‘I learnt about the different traits of dogs, how to read them ... The training I do is always set around what I read in the dog.

‘‘I have a basic format but if I can read that dog a bit better I can work it better.’’

Marsh, who lives in Woodville but travels all over the mid to lower North Island, says he feels more comfortable with dogs than humans. Humans are very changeable. They’re like the weather, he says. They have too many moods.

‘‘Dogs have the same emotions. It’s just that I can read a dog better.’’

He has worked as a shearer and a hunter. He is happiest when he is in the bush.

Sometimes when you’re sitting there with a dog you get to see things more clearly, he says.

‘‘The bush, that’s my sort of space.

‘‘I find myself a bit more out there. It’s the peace and quiet.’’ He has no plans to retire.

As long as he has a dog to train he will keep doing the mahi.

‘‘It’s the dogs that get me up there.’’