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As people with a love of animals and quite a bit of
land, we thought about what animals we could help. After fostering
some rescue pigs, we found we really liked them and so ended up with a
baby pig, the lovely Trudy.
We run a holiday centre and most people who come
don't mind the animals as we have a country location and people walk or
bike around the area. We hoped people would love Trudy too.
The pigs we had fostered were adults and what we hadn't realised was that
babies need training and socialising like dogs do. There were lots
of things we laughed at with Trudy and shouldn't have. When she came
she was smaller than a Cocker Spaniel but you can see from the photo she
is a very large adult pig.
As she got bigger, she became more difficult.
Although she did and still does love a belly rub like a dog and will roll
over, she also became more determined. Unlike a dog we couldn't lead
her away from trouble on a lead, she was simply too big and heavy.
She started to frighten visitors, raid barbecues and bags and wouldn't
listen. People complained that she was causing a problem so we sadly
had to stop her roaming freely as she had done when smaller.
It seemed impossible to make her go anywhere we
needed her too, and this worried us in case she either ran towards
something dangerous or simply charged at someone. We asked Debbie
for help as we had seen her dog training and heard how amazing her
customers thought she was, although we didn't hold out much hope for a
pig.
Trudy was taught various things with a noise and
food. One specific rattle noise and she would come running! It
took several sessions to
get her to understand what we wanted and some of it was filmed for the
BBC's "Britain's Most Embarrassing Pets" show. This was great as we
have a permanent reminder of her. In fact for the show, she ran off
after some people who were carrying bags (potentially food!) and came
straight back for her reward when she heard the rattle even though she was
running away at the time.
We were amazed at how Trudy learned and she now gets
more freedom. We also learned to play more appropriate games
with her and to stop doing some things we thought were fun but were
teaching her bad habits. Please do ask for help if you have a
naughty pig, we love Trudy and we are so grateful to Debbie for helping us
to give her the best possible life. Trudy has a new friend now, a
lovely baby Kune Kune as pigs should be with pigs.
December 2009 Nigel and Monique
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