wild hunting pack....

Even though it is Sunday, I had planned to get up at 5:30 am to go for my usual morning bycicle ride. But well, I woke up, it was raining, kind of dark, the dogs were sleeping deeply and I had a swollen eye because of a moquito bite and I thought that these were enough reasons to turn around and continue sleeping...I woke up again at 08:45 and as it had stopped raining, I quickly got ready and Angelo, Paulo, Liwa and I took off for our bike tripp. But today the luck was not on our side: Just after 5 minutes it started raining again and I didn't have anything to cover up. Then Paulo suddenly started running like crazy and before I could understand what was happening Liwa and Angelo joined in and all 3 of them were hunting a dear on the field. I managed to call Angelo and Liwa back but Paulo was gone and I think that I had never seen him running that fast...Anyways, he lost track of the dear and came back. I pinched him so hard that he would squeek and had all of them sit for a few seconds before we would continue our ride. At this point, I thought that everything would be fine again as at the end of the day, it was only due to my late reaction that I lost control and they had hardly shown any hunting behaviour before when we would see dear, foxes etc. crossing our way. Well, 20 minutes later, a rabbit crossed our way and although Paulo and Angelo at first kept calm, this time Liwa got TOTALLY out of control and started hunting the rabbit. She was completely gone, squeeking and running like I had never seen her before. And of course, Paulo and Angelo couldn't resist and started running after Liwa and the rabbit. At one point, the rabbit turned around and nearly ran into me and there I could stop the dogs as I jumped onto Angelo. Now I was INCREDIBLY upset. They nearly caught the rabbit and there is no way I could tolerate this. On top of all, we were in a protected area where hunting dogs are shot immediately. I punished them very hard and had them do 'down' on the floor for at least 10 minutes for them and even more for me to calm down. When we continued our way, I could feel that the dogs were in a big hunting mood. They were sniffeling the floor and pointing their ears to every single noise that would come from the forest. Only 5 minutes later, a dear crossed our way and Liwa and Angelo left again. Paulo it seems, had learned his lesson and stayed with me this time. He always made sure to leave some distance between him and me as he was now scared of any consequences. Angelo and Liwa stopped a few meters away from me as the dear had jumped into the forest and I caught them at their collars and even though I punished them again, they hardly calmed down. Especially Liwa was completely out of her mind. I decided to walk the rest of the way to be better in control and was happy when we finally reached home. What a disaster!!!