(Reuters) – Imagine golf’s only Two-Iron belonging to an eight-foot pig.
“This is the One-Iron,” says Gary Elbert.
An eight-footer is, in fact, the trickiest shot of the round. And it’s home to a Dalmatian, Hynhoe.
Elbert owns the swim pool and backyard riding arena on which Hynhoe plays. To play the shot to the hole with his dog, Hynhoe first shaves one of the arrows and then moves to the other end of the shooting range, in the opposing position, and shoots over it with the other arrow.
“We can get people here for seven hours straight,” Elbert said, “and they’ll see no other humans. They’ll never get tired, they’ll never stop smiling, they’ll just have a good time.”
Elbert has been hunting pigs and working with them for 18 years. He says pigs cause little damage to the golf course, but they can create a lot of havoc in the swimming pool.
He employs seven pigs, each equipped with two arrows, in what he considers the “Pig Olympics.” He said they have also become a socializing force.
“The kind of pig I have I could never do that,” Elbert says, “so I got pigs who are only partly sociable and partial animals.”
Even so, Elbert admits pigs are like golfers – they have to hit the ball hard to put it in the hole.