This Little Piggy Came Home

     It was a beautiful fall day in  2008.  I was sitting on my deck watching my outside animal friends at the feeders when I received a emergency phone call about a horrible rescue that had taken place in my County . I live in Lakawanna , Co. PA. were  there was a older woman that had a herd of 54 potbellied pigs that our Humane Society had confiscated  in  July and they were being kept not far from my home. I offered assistance and was asked to be an expert witness for the pet potbellied pig at the hearing for this case.

     I took a day and went to see the herd at the barn that they were being kept. This is where I got the story of how this woman did not have the means to feed or keep this many pigs in good conditions. There were only 13 sows and the rest of the herd were boars . Only one of the pigs were neutered so that meant that this herd were reproducing litters as fast as they could .

      At the time I met the herd they were putting weight back on and getting their new bristles back. All in all they were looking a lot better than the pictures that were all over the local media. Our Pig Placement Network was also involved in helping to get homes for this herd as soon as the court cases were over.

     A few of the Sows had already had their litters and that is where I met Little Willow. I am an animal communicator  so I can hear animals talk ,and as I stood outside the stall she was in with her 2 sisters and Mother I saw just how beautiful she was. She was the only one that had a white tail and 4 white feet and a blaze in the middle of her little forehead.

     Every time I looked at her she was looking at me . Then I heard this distinct little voice that said to me "Hi my name is Willow and you are going to be my new Mommie."

     Well I was not interested at all in another pig, because I had just lost my very special pig  girl Reggie almost 2 years before and I still had a senior pig at home named Pepper.

     Reggie and I had been Animal Assisted Therapy Pet Partners for over 14 years before she passed into spirit and I was still devastated because of losing my Guardian Angel and best friend.

     There was no way I could take this baby home . Well I was wrong, I asked around about adding a baby to our life and was told that a baby would get along just fine with my old girl. I thought of everything I could why  not to bring her home. I was getting set in my ways and so was Pepper. A new baby pig would just upset the apple cart.

     A new baby? I thought looking around my home with all the knick, knacks all over my floors . My old girls never touched them. I had trained them well when they were young. How could I go through that again?  Then I came up with a plan. I thought to myself that if I brought Willow home with me and it didn't work out at least I would have trained her for our rescue group, PPN, to be a good piggy for someone else.

     That said , I told them the next day that I would take her when she was ready to go, after all she was only 4 weeks old.

     The day finally came for me to get her and it was amazing. She was wonderful. She allowed me to handle her right from the start. She was not socialized at all but you would never have known that. I started to train her to a harness and leash and then the ramp, then came tricks and before I knew it she was doing almost everything I had trained my Reggie to do.

     She was excited to learn everything and when she was 9 months old we were out doing our very first educational shows for children at our Lakawanna County Libraries. She wowed them with her piano playing and her horns then she unrolled her carpet topped off with her superior intelligence for her flash cards when she showed them how a pig could add, and subtract simple math and then she showed how she knew her colors and shapes as well as her being able to pick out a doll or a seal or an owl from the cards I held in my hand.

We always end our show proving how pigs can read minds . I ask a child to pick a color card and not say what it is in front of her  then I ask her to pick the right one from 2  in my hands. She picks the right one every time.

She even made the local news paper because of her special  talents.

She is an amazing little girl and I love her dearly so I think I will keep her..You think ?

 By, Becky DiNolfi