Many years ago I told my husband and a dear friend that I would love to have a potbelly pig in my life. I appreciate that having a pig living with you is not everyone's cup of tea and I can respect that. I have never particularly blended with the crowd so this was something I really wanted to pursue. Getting a piglet from a breeder wasn't something I wanted to do. I was hoping to find a pig who needed a home.
One day shortly after I seriously began considering life with a potbelly, my friend called to tell me that she just found out about a piggy that needed a new home. I was thrilled! She, also a lover of potbelly pigs, told me to play it cool when we went to meet Honey. Two fairly young children were given a female potbelly pig on the way home from school. Often military families will push their pets, especially exotics, onto unsuspecting people and sadly these children were it. Their mother was less than thrilled and knew potbelly pigs were not allowed on the military installation where they lived. Parting with the girls' new friend was a necessary act.
My friend fell in love with Honey immediately and totally disregarded her play it cool advice. I too fell in love with this very sweet girl. Honey had a mildly deformed hoof which along with her very sweet eyes made her irresistible to me. Her very happy swishing tail showed us that she felt the same. She less than gracefully fell down while we rubbed her tummy and showed every sign of being the piggy to come into my life. The girls said their goodbyes and their mom wished us luck.
Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with the porcine species, pigs do NOT like having their hooves leave tierra firma and when they are forced to, they scream. Now when I use this term I do not mean they make cute piggy grunts, and I do not mean gentle noises when they are slightly perturbed. When I say scream, I mean gut curdling, ear deafening shrieks that could wake the dead. Fortunately Honey was fairly easy to lift up and put into our van and the screaming did not last long. She rode happily home and was quite schmoozy to our dogs and cats.
It was clear that Honey had been around pets before and was very gentle to all our animals. She was housebroken and would grunt to go outside. Now pigs and steps are also a challenge so my husband was kind enough to build Honey a ramp which she loved! Honey would roll a favorite ball of hers up and down the ramp so the food would come out. It was lots of fun for her and she would happily grunt along following every move the ball made.
My friend, Anita, was a middle school teacher which made her different from most folks. Another unique feature was that she could tolerate nails on a chalkboard which is a technique she often used to get her students' attention. In past years, Anita had crossed paths with another potbelly pig who wore a harness. Anita being a practical soul, not remembering piggy screams, picked up the pig by the harness and moved her outside of her classroom. This must have been a fading memory because she considered doing it with Honey but later rethought the idea and often reminded me to not pick up my pig like a suitcase. I honored the sentiment.
Honey was an absolute joy! She came with me to work which as a mental health counselor was not as strange as you might imagine. When you work with a psychiatrist, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, and a psychologist, the office is not typical. Honey was trained as a therapy animal and would often come to visit and support clients I was seeing. She was loved by my co-workers and happily grunted down the hallway.
Now the building we worked in was also home to the offices of some attorneys and more than one of their comments often caused me to go: "Hmmmm". One such day occurred when Honey and I were taking a walk around the building. One of the attorneys stuck their head out of the door and asked: "Is that a javalina?" For those of you not from the desert, a javalina is a wild pig that smells particularly bad and is very aggressive. It was curious to me that an attorney, someone you would think had the skill of critical thinking, would ask if my freshly bathed and groomed, harness wearing, tail wagging, domesticated porcine was a wild pig. I did my best to suck up my Northeastern sarcasm and reply simply: "No, it's not."
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