Growing up in a small town of Naalehu in Ka‘ū on the Big Island Of Hawai‘i, I was a little boy that didn't like video games or staying indoors. I liked fishing and playing in mud puddles with my boots.

I had found the joy of fishing. From the moment I could hold a fishing rod. I used to go down south every weekend with my dad because I wanted to perfect my fishing skills with my lures that my father taught me how to make.

My dad and I were making a killing with all the wishes we were catching.

When we received three puppies that were in a box from my brother in law, the pups were really lacking in health and they were rail. We reacted quickly and nursed the puppies back to health with Powerade and antibiotics for a straight week or so. Until one day we were deworming the pups and the boy pup named “Floki” overdosed on the medicine because it was too strong for him so we quickly reacted and showed him with water and did dog CPR on him and in a blink of an eye, he woke up.

When they were about five months old, my dad felt that they were the age to be trained and ready to be shown pigs, so we went straight to craigslist and there was this guy giving away two pigs that he had in his trap just up the road. So we traded smoked meat with the guy and we took the two pigs. My brother in law took one and we took the other one to go train the pups. We got all the pups together and took them up to the mountain to spar and to train the pups how to bite the pig. We gave the pig a little head start then we let go of the puppies, they chased it almost to the end of the mac nut field and stopped the pig, that's when it started screaming. So we pulled them off and let go of the pig.

The training was on because a couple of days before we took them to see their first pig, we took them walking with our older dogs and as soon as we reached the spot, the older dogs started smelling and started running because there was a fresh scent and there was a pig near. They ran about 400 yards until we heard them in the distance barking at a pig, so quickly we started running towards the noise until we were able to see the dogs barking at the pig. We hustled the puppies to bite the pig too with the older dogs. In a blink of an eye, the three puppies: Kaliese, Floki, and Mongoose were biting and barking at the pig until it was time to dispatch the pigs. Then we packed the pigs back to the truck and the three pups that just started hunting were all grown and snapped out of their puppy phase.

Fast forward 6 months and our three puppies started to form a joy for hunting because not only did we nurse those puppies back to health but they started catching their own pigs for us. It was a big joy because we took care of those puppies and now those puppies are taking care of me and my family and providing us with wild pork to make smoked meat so that way they can take care of the whole family. Without the help of those puppies, I wouldn't have formed a joy for hunting.

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