Animals are Funny: Pot-bellied Pigs
Posted: Wednesday, September 07, 2011
by Dianne Lehmann
Artisan Jewelry from SyZyGy
I get to experience life with all sorts of different animals. I count myself as blessed for this. My husband, Bernd, and I currently have just the one cat, Winnie (I keep thinking she needs a dog). But two days a week, I get to go visit a menagerie of animals. There are seven horses, three dogs, one pot-bellied pig and two cats all with their own very separate personalities. This doesn't take into account the mice, rabbits, squirrels, snakes and lizards that inhabit the ranch as well, or the ravens, roadrunners, hawks, doves, Phoebes, starlings or other birds that drop by for a while. I don't see the two tortoises much. They live in the house.
Ordinarily, Jed would greet my arrival with several sweet oinks that I figure mean something like: "Have you got a yummy for me? I so hope you've got a yummy." These oinks would be uttered while he walked over to the gate in the fence surrounding his area. But with as hot as it's been, now when I arrive, Jed is lying in the shade of his junipine tree or next to the scrub oak. There's no twitch of an ear, blink of an eye or snuffle of a snout. But be does thump his tail in the dirt to acknowledge my "hello."
When Kay came home to live after finishing her education in Phoenix, she brought Jed and Earl (a horse; King [another horse] had remained with her mom during that time). Jed had very little room to roam in their previous home and with his disinclination to, his toe nails had become very long, and his tusks had grown out to the point where it was hard for him to open his mouth very wide. When giving him a carrot as a treat and I would have to bite it into small pieces and then push them into his mouth past his front incisors.
So, Kay started thinking about trimming it all. She studied to be a dental technician and thought maybe she could handle his teeth on her own, but she wasn't sure about his feet. Kay and I would brainstorm about it. She couldn't just flip him onto his back because he absolutely hates being on his back. I can understand that given the size of his stomach. To have that hanging down with gravity is one thing. To have it lying on top of you is another. I started designing slings in my head and a way to raise him just off of the ground so he wouldn't get too upset.
A neighbor of theirs who used to raise sheep for profit, suggested she use the "hold" that they employed when shearing or medicating the sheep: you crouch down behind the sheep (or pig), grab it around its middle just behind the front legs and sit back lifting the front end of the sheep (or pig) off of the ground. Then of course you'd have to hold this protesting pig securely through the entire procedure. The neighbor never said whether or not the sheep protested. I'm thinking not. Neither of us thought that we were really up to that. I just didn't think that Jed would take all that kindly to being handled that way and he'd probably give some thought to biting to show his displeasure (turns out I would have been wrong about that, he had something else in mind). Besides, he weighs just about as much as I do.
Finally Kay decided to have it all done professionally. While I was game to help her in any way I could, it was still something of a relief to me. Eventually, the day of the appointment came.
Kay had at one time taken Jed with her whenever she went to the pet store. Young children would ask her what kind of dog he was. So, okay, it was Phoenix and that passes for a big city in Arizona, although it's not nearly even as cosmopolitan as say Los Angeles. And city kids don't always know a lot about barnyard animals. But really … what kind of dog?
As a young pot-bellied pig, he was small and fit into a dog harness. But as a mature pig … well she didn't have one large enough and I'm not sure they even make them that large. So we were standing there, staring at Jed and noodling it out when I came up with the idea of making a harness from an old horse lunging line. They are made of stout, inch wide webbing. So we found one and because I am clever with knots, we had one all tied together in no time. The disc-shaped, hard rubber weight on the end of it would make a good "stop" should he decide to just take off suddenly and the line went slipping through Kay's hand. Yeah, right.
It was a figure eight sort of arrangement with a double layer straight piece between the loops. The front loop went around him forward of his front legs and just behind his formidable jowls. The second loop went around just behind his front legs. There was enough line left over to make a decent lead with the weight at the end of it. Getting it on him was another matter.
Previously devoutly sedentary Jed became a flurry … well not exactly a flurry … of activity. He was walking and oinking (not the cute little repeated oink, oink, oink of greeting but those long drawn out oiiinks that say "Oh, I don't like this. I don't like this at all.") all over his enclosure and wouldn't stand still for more than a few seconds. We were moving slowly and talking soothingly and trying to upset him as little as possible and still accomplish our goal. I'm sure we looked pretty funny. Kay was in front of me talking sweetly to him, while I followed her in a crouch with the harness held out in front of me waiting for any opening to apply it. So you've got this little parade going on. Pig, Kay, me … around and around and around.
Eventually she got him to stand still for a minute and I put the harness on him. We couldn't make the loop behind his jowls too tight because there's nothing back of them but throat. But we tightened the back loop very securely. We tied up the extra lead so it wouldn't drag and trip him and then Kay went to get cleaned up before taking him in. After messing with a pig for an hour you sort of need to do that.
I headed home because I'd been there for about five hours already, was hot and worn out and had accomplished all I'd set out to do that day so I didn't see what happened, but I take Kay at her word. Her mom was going to accompany her so she had some time to kill before her mom got home. That meant Jed had some time to kill as well. When they were all ready to go, Kay went down to get Jed. She found him standing a little way off from the harness which was on the ground in a small pile. I can't imagine how he managed to get out of it. While Kay stood looking at him and wondering what to do now, Jed walked over to the harness and pissed all over it, staring straight at Kay the whole time he did it. She said she laughed out loud.
So Kay and Dee got the largest dog carrier they had, smooshed him into it and loaded it into the back of the pickup truck and took him to the appointment. Kay stayed outside because she didn't think she could take waiting inside. The "groomer" had told her that they would be putting him on his back. Dee went in just in case anything happened that needed an immediate decision. She told Kay later that he hadn't really screamed all that much. Kay admitted that she stayed in the truck with the radio on the whole time.
They say pigs have phenomenal memories and I'm inclined to agree with that. Jed likes me well enough when I have food in my hands, but he keeps his little piggy eyes on me the entire time I am feeding it to him. As soon as the food is gone, he no longer wants to be near me. Heaven forbid I should try to give him a good scratch behind the jowl. He loves to be scratched there, just not by me. I think he associates that whole episode with me and probably blames me for it because Mom (meaning Kay) couldn't possibly have wanted him to suffer so.
Trouble is, his tusks are growing out again making it hard for him to eat and his toes are getting long making it hard for him to walk. He's going to need another trim before long. I think I'll just stay out of it this time.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Oh, you entertained me royally, Dianne! I laughed myself silly throughout this whole, wonderful narrative. You're so good at blow-by-blow accounts of life. I've often heard that pigs make fantastic pets, but I've had difficulty getting my head around the idea - until now. Jed sounds like a cutie with a real personality. The peeing incident is hilarious!!Hi Jennifer.
I'm glad you found it amusing. I think animals are often hilarious, but I wasn't sure if other people would agree with me.
I think pigs do make great pets. They are intelligent. Learn things easily (maybe too easily). And are actually quite affectionate. They're just not all that huggable. At least not Jed. Not that he'd let me. But they are kind of bristly ... ever heard of boar bristle hair brushes?
Glad you enjoyed it!
Hugs,
DianneYou put your finger on why I've had a hard time thinking of pigs as pets - because I like hugging!!
I had a friend who kept a hug pb pig in his pre-fab home. I enjoyed the image of the wrestling match. Thanks for the article.
What do we do with this Story Tellers group of ours and the new SearchWarp stuff?Hi Jack.
I think a lot of us are wondering where it will all end up on SW. I'm just trying to keep in mind that it is, was and probably always will be a work in progress. The day SW stands still and refuses to change is the day it dies. That said, I'll just say that I don't deal well with change. :) But I accept the inevitability of it.
I think the Story Tellers group is a good one because of it's members and because the group name is so open-ended. Seems like we could put just about any article we want into this group. After all, we are just telling our stories.
I've looked at a number of sites recently that provide a platform for people to submit articles on a myriad subjects. One that is a little more specific is Science Daily. The home page set-up is very similar to how Bruce has organized our new homepage with the groups substituting for categories like "Math," "Biology," "Astronomy" and the like. The new SW homepage does seem to be more current and topical.
As Bruce wrote in his latest article, we need to attract 20 times the writers and readers and that we now attract in order to stay afloat. I hope we can do it. I think we can, but only time will tell.
Thanks for reading!
Hugs,
Dianne
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