One Hundred Swiss Scent Hounds in Malvaglia

Last Sunday, Malvaglia in the Blenio Valley became the national gathering point for Swiss scent hound breeders.

Around one hundred animals from across Switzerland, with a Ticinese majority, as well as participants from neighboring countries and from Great Britain, were judged in the ring according to “morphology, hunting behavior, and breed standard.” The organizer was the Club Segugio Svizzero, which promotes and markets the breed. New this year: the founding of the so-called “Pool Cinofilo Venatorio Ticino,” which is intended to further institutionalize cooperation between hobby hunters, breeders, and authorities in the canton of Ticino.

What sounds like folklore and a dog show is in reality a central building block of a system that degrades wildlife to prey and turns dogs into tools.

Hunting dogs: tools, not family members

Hobby hunting in Switzerland functions in large part only because hunting dogs flush out, chase, bay, or track wildlife after the often poor shots of hobby hunters. Tracking dogs find shot deer and wild boar that their handlers failed to kill cleanly. Flushing dogs drive wild boar in panicked flight toward shooters during driven and battue hunts. Pack dogs bay wildlife until a shot from point-blank range is possible, or lock on in animal fights that animal welfare law is supposed to prohibit.

How problematic the use of hunting dogs is has been documented by “Wild beim Wild” for years. In Wehrheim, Hesse, Swiss flushing dogs caused minutes-long death struggles of screaming wild boar in 2024, captured on video by eyewitnesses (see “Animal cruelty with Swiss assistance”). In Cham, Bavaria, a hobby hunter set his dogs on healthy wild boar for so long that they could be stabbed to death with a boar spear once exhausted. The proceedings ended with a penalty order for animal cruelty (see Case Lasse Böckmann). In Davos, the tracking dog of a board member of “Jagd Schweiz” chased a deer through a residential neighborhood (see Case Tarzisius Caviezel).

Kennels instead of family: the invisible animal cruelty between hunting seasons

What is put on display at the ring in Malvaglia are dogs in festive mode: groomed, presented, judged. What is not shown is the daily reality of these animals between hunting seasons. Precisely because many hunting dogs are selectively bred and conditioned for aggression, sharpness, and an extreme prey drive, their owners consider them too dangerous for normal family life. The result: a large portion of Swiss hunting dogs do not spend their lives in the living room, but in kennels, basements, or on a leash, often without daily exercise and without social contact with humans or other dogs.

Swiss animal welfare law is unambiguous on this point: dogs must be walked outdoors daily in a manner suited to their needs. Year-round confinement on a chain or in a kennel does not meet the needs of hunting dogs and must be rejected. The Swiss animal welfare organization STS states in its position paper on hunting dogs that there is absolutely nothing to be said in favor of their training and use, except in the case of tracking wounded game.

The reality for many hobby hunters, however, looks quite different. In the canton of Jura, it has been documented how hunting dogs are kept in poor condition without daily exercise and without outdoor enclosures, with correspondingly aggressive behavior as a direct consequence of years of animal cruelty. Dogs used for hunting spend more often than not their entire year living a miserable and bleak existence in an unlawful kennel and are only able to run free during the hunting season. Some are lost during hobby hunting or are killed.

The mechanism behind this is cynical: the intensely bred hunting instinct is only welcome during hobby hunting. For the rest of the year — roughly ten to eleven months — that same instinct is forcibly suppressed through confinement in a kennel or on a leash. This is no life for a dog; it is a form of chronic stress that unleashes itself in even greater aggression toward wildlife at every driven hunt. The dog thus becomes a victim twice over: once as a tormented pet, and once as a tool that in turn torments other animals.

Earthdog trials and wild boar enclosures: The dark side of “hunting dog training”

Hobby hunting systematically subjects animals to cruelty through the training of its dogs on live wildlife. In earthdog trial facilities, foxes are kept in artificial dens so that dogs can learn to corner them. In wild boar enclosures, as they are also discussed in Switzerland, dogs are to be “sharpened” on hand-tame wild boars. The Stiftung Tier im Recht has stated in a legal opinion that earth dog hunting fulfills the criminal offense of animal cruelty in multiple respects.

Behind the glamour of the dog show in Malvaglia lies a business model that deliberately conditions dogs to chase and bay wild animals, often resulting in severe injuries, Aujeszky's disease, and psychological desensitization.

Geneva: Without hobby hunters and without hunting dogs since 1974

Those who proudly present pedigree certificates in Malvaglia should take a look toward the Rhône. In the Canton of Geneva hobby hunting has been banned since the popular vote of May 19, 1974. Around two-thirds of voters said yes at the time to the animal welfare-motivated initiative. Since then, twelve cantonal professional wildlife wardens, the «Police de la nature», handle all necessary interventions in wild animal populations. Without packs of hounds, without tracking dogs, without flushing dogs.

The record after more than 50 years is unambiguous (see dossier “How does the Geneva hunting ban work?”):

• Instant kill rate of 99.5 percent for sanitary culls carried out by professional wildlife wardens — a figure that militia hunting in no other canton comes close to achieving.
• Field hare density of 17.7 animals per 100 hectares, one of the highest figures in Switzerland, even though the field hare was threatened with extinction in Geneva before 1974.
• Tenfold increase in overwintering waterfowl along the shores of Lake Geneva and the Rhône.
• Virtually no forestry damage, comparable wildlife damage figures to those in the hunting-managed Canton of Schaffhausen.
• Total costs of around 1.2 million francs per year for 500’000 residents, including damage prevention and compensation for farmers. Per capita, less than a cup of coffee.

Geneva's fauna inspector Gottlieb Dandliker notes: “This regulation is carried out exclusively by wildlife wardens; no amateur hunters are involved.” The professional wildlife wardens work with light amplifiers and night-vision technology, not with packs of hounds. The fact that wild animals from heavily hunted France and the Canton of Vaud even swim across the Rhône to seek “asylum” in Geneva is by now well documented.

What this means for Malvaglia, Ticino, and all of Switzerland

The show in Malvaglia stages a «radition» that has been abolished without replacement in a Swiss canton for over five decades. Without ecological disaster, without wild boar plagues, without security problems. On the contrary: biodiversity is higher in Geneva, wildlife is less skittish, and the instant-kill rate for the few necessary culls is massively better than in cantons managed by hobby hunters.

Anyone who evaluates dogs for «hunting suitability» in Malvaglia is essentially assessing how efficiently an animal can torment other animals — and accepts that these dogs themselves must spend the greater part of their lives in kennels. Geneva doesn’t need that. Luxembourg largely doesn’t need it either. The rest of Switzerland could likewise do without it. What is missing is not a new «Pool Cinofilo Venatorio», but the political will to finally put the Geneva model up for discussion in Ticino and German-speaking Switzerland as well.

The hundred hounds of Malvaglia are not folklore. They are the symbol of a system that instrumentalizes and confines wildlife and dogs alike. Geneva has proven that there is another way. It is time to take that proof seriously.