Dogs

Pig came visiting

We live in the countryside and have a large garden of over an acre which we are trying to tame and make into a productive self-sufficient small croft. We started to keep chickens nearly a year ago and out 8 hens are still laying 7-8 eggs a day and just love the large free range area they have to scrape and wander around in. So what has this got to do with dogs and a pig? Well I let my collie out at 11 pm and after a few minutes she came running in and behind her was the sound I had never heard before, I noticed a fairly large animal running down the side of our house.

It turned out to be an escaped pig from the next door farm. It was dark and I did not like the idea of leaving a pig roaming around our garden eating my plants and recently planted trees so off I went to try and catch the pig. I could not use our collies, for Tibby was recuperating from an operation and my other collie was not a farm dog (Tibby is / was).

pig in Garden

I ended up walking up my wife and for over an hour we tried to catch the pig, who was I have to say very happy about being fed scraps of bred and carrots, and far too bright to get caught. We nearly managed to get her into an animal transport trailer, except at the last moment she side swerved and got away. I even managed to put a dog lead on her, again she was too smart and managed to get out of that. In the end the traffic on the road stopped and we left her roaming around the farm tracks.

In the morning I got up early and had a look around the farm to see if I could find her. She was nowhere to be seen. On looking around our garden suddenly a grunting noise and a head appeared out of a bale of straw we have, the pig had snuggled into the straw and slept. I went and told our neighbours that their pig was in our garden – and yes it is amazing what a bucket of barley can do, she was happy to follow George with his pail of food back to her mates.

Pig

Pig looking at chickens

Well it is now over two weeks since Tibby had her major operation and we went to the vet to have her stitches out; she was as good as gold during this simple procedure. Unfortunately the results of the test on the removed tuber were not as good as we had hoped for with the mammary tumour being possibly malignant. There is however a good chance that by removing it we will have stopped it coming back. She is as bright as can be so we are hopeful that she will have a long and happy life ahead of her.

She has been getting a bit stir crazy being stuck in the house and we were told she could go for a walk on the beach as long as we kept her on the lead, so off to the beach after being at the vet – she loved it as did our other collie, Charlie.

Tibby after operation

Dogs on the beach