Stories

"Cully"

"Sauve"

It was 11:30 on a particularly wet, bitter March night when a knock at my door brought my dogs exploding to their feet.

“This house is well guarded ! Trespass at your peril!” they barked. I made my way to the door through a sea of fur, puzzled about who it could be. I live on a farm, and country people don’t usually arrive unannounced at so late an hour.

“Beware! Beware!” barked the dogs.

“Good dogs,” I told them. “Be quiet now – back up,” and they obeyed reluctantly.

I opened the door and found a friend of mine, dripping with freezing rain, holding something wrapped inside his raincoat.

“I’m sorry it’s so late,” he said, “but this little dog needs help right away…” I pulled him in to the warmth and light of the kitchen and he gently put his bundle down on the table. Inside was a small, black dog, incredibly filthy, wet and scruffy. The wide, staring eyes and rigid muscles spoke of fear, but the dog showed no aggression as I began to look her over. I searched rapidly for injuries, and found that her left leg was distended from her body at a bizarre angle – either broken or dislocated, I couldn’t tell which. Her entire body was matted with blood, thick black grease and road gravel. Her gums were pale and her breathing shallow. I continued to search until I found she had only one large wound – a deep gash on her inner thigh. It was matted with fur and semi dried blood, which was acting as a Band-Aid. I only hoped she wasn’t bleeding internally.

While I had been checking her over, my friend told me how he had found her. He had been driving home on the highway when his headlights had picked up a shape in the road ahead. As he swerved around, he realized the shape was the bodies of two dead dogs. At the last second, he thought he saw a head and eyes raising from the pile. Despite heavy traffic and a steady downpour, he pulled over and ran back. Two large dogs lay dead, and huddled in between them was the little black dog. He quickly pulled off his raincoat and threw it over her just as she started to run from him. Not sure what else to do with her so late at night, he brought her to me.

I called my vet, a wonderful woman who is never more than a phone call away, and she said she’d meet me at the hospital in twenty minutes. As I put on a raincoat, my dogs stood around the kitchen, looking concerned. Dario, my big chocolate Labrador, whined and gave me the little head bump he uses to draw my attention to important things. I bent to stroke his head and told him I’d take good care of her.

I wrapped her up in a blanket to keep her warm and help prevent her from moving. As I carried her out to my car my friend took his leave, asking me to let him know how she fared. I put her on the passenger seat and drove through the slanting rain to the animal hospital. As we neared the end of the brief trip she began to whimper and moan, and I talked to her, hoping my good intentions would come through.

Dr. Alma Fitzgerald was looking alert but rumpled – she’d been at a difficult foaling and had only just arrived home when I had called her. Her strong, gentle hands quickly felt over the little dog’s body as she asked me what I knew about her. I filled her in on what my friend had told me, and drew her attention to the gash on the little dog’s thigh.

“The gash is already sealed shut, and she isn’t losing any more blood, but her hip is dislocated,” she said, “I want to see if I can get it back into the socket without full anesthesia – it would be risky to put her under in this condition.”

After giving an injection of muscle relaxant, Dr. Alma showed me where and how to hold, and then she began to move the little black leg which stuck out from the body at such an obscene angle. Almost immediately there was a loud click and the leg was back in position. Dr. Alma smiled at my enthusiastic praise and said, “It’s not usually that easy!”

We agreed to wait until the next day to clean and dress her many small cuts and abrasions as well as the deep gash. She was too shocked and exhausted to take any more at the moment.

I took her home, gave her a drink of water and then put her in a basket beside my bed where she fell asleep immediately. During the night, however, she awoke several times with nightmares, once leaping completely out of the basket, screaming.

By morning she seemed a little calmer but I was completely exhausted. I had never before seen such a clear example of a dog having nightmares in connection with a traumatic event and although on a professional level I found it very interesting, it tore at my heart to see her remembering her terror on the highway again and again.

She was terribly starved, her ribs sticking out like fingers under her scraggly black wire coat. I gave her only a very small amount of food several times a day, as her digestive system couldn’t handle too much all at once. Each time I fed her she ate so fast I thought she might choke herself, and she drank as much water as I would give her between meals. As the day went on, she began to take a slowly increasing interest in her surroundings, and in me and the other animals, but she remained huddled in her bed. I carried her outdoors several times to relieve herself and when I put her down she would hobble on three legs, refusing altogether to put her injured leg on the ground.

I took her back to the vet, who decided not to stitch the gash, as it was already sealed on its own, and she told me to clean the other wounds as best I could without disturbing the scabs. In the late afternoon I decided she was ready for a sponge bath. She stayed calm, standing on three legs in my kitchen sink. It seemed as if someone had often bathed her in the past. She looked much better when she was cleaner, but she was an absolute mass of cuts and bruises. She was also in heat.

She was a small dog, about three years old, looking roughly like a Cairn Terrier, but with a longer, Scotty-like face, a long tail and ridiculous but charming gull’s wing ears. They pointed away from the sides of her face, one a little higher than the other, which made her look as if she was always asking a question. She had a scruffy face, with bushy eyebrows, a mustache and beard and large, expressive eyes. She had a certain raffish appeal about her and I wondered what her personality would be like when she recovered from her fear. As I sat holding her in my arms she was calm but distant and trembled from time to time. I decided to call her “Sauve”, which means “rescued” in French, and is pronounced “So-vay”.

During the weeks which followed, Sauve began to come into her own. She was extremely well mannered and had been trained in several basic commands. She was increasingly cheerful and playful as her fears subsided. She became very affectionate and loved to nap on my feet. She was also very pregnant, and getting rounder every day. I, too, was pregnant at the time, and the two of us would waddle along at the pregnant lady speed on our walks through the fields while my other dogs leaped and bounded around us. She continued to refuse to use her injured leg, despite the vet’s assurances that it was healing well. Sauve did not believe it.

I advertised for weeks for her previous owner, as someone had obviously loved and cared for her well at one time – despite not having gotten her spayed. She had definitely been stray for some time before her heat began – her state of starvation attested to that. In all probability, she had been chased onto the highway by the two big, male dogs, excited by her being in heat. Ironically, their deaths had saved her – cars had seen them and swerved to avoid their large bodies whereas her small, black self would not have been noticed on that dark and rainy night.

Being pregnant makes one introspective, makes one think of the nature and meaning of life and death. Sitting patting her, I often found myself thinking about the strange series of events that had brought her to my door, and wondering how she had gotten separated from her owners. Had one or both of the big dogs on the highway been the father of the pups she carried ? Did they have owners who had missed them, searched for them ? What was the nature of the fate that had first put her in harm’s way and then saved her life ? I do not know if Sauve was having similar thoughts, but her big, brown eyes were often serious. I wished that she could tell me her story, and I hoped she understood she was safe now.

We got progressively larger, she and I, and eventually she decided it was time to put down that fourth leg. Her bruises and cuts were all healed by this time, but her coat looked as moth eaten as ever, and would not improve until after her next shed.

One evening, as I was cooking dinner, Suave suddenly began to walk in a circle and pant very loudly – she was in labor. I put her in her whelping box in a corner of the kitchen, and settled my own bulk on a large cushion beside her. Within an hour, the first puppy was born. He was so big I was amazed she had been able to deliver him, and the next pups, also whelped without trouble, were almost equally large. I stayed beside her the entire time, soothing and encouraging her, with my enormous belly between us, hoping that my own labor would be so quick and easy when it came. In the end she had five beautiful puppies – one cream and four black.

The pups grew quickly, and were soon tumbling about the kitchen. Dario, the Labrador, took on the role of uncle. With a pup biting his tail, another nipping his belly in a fruitless attempt to find milk, a couple hanging off his ears and the fifth chewing on a paw as big as the pup’s own head, Dario was in his glory. He would carefully climb over the low gate into the kitchen, flop down on the floor and give an enormous, gratified sigh as the puppies mobbed him. Sauve, too, would give an enormous sigh, but for exactly the opposite reason!

Soon the puppies were old enough to go to new homes, and after much careful interviewing I had them all well placed. Sauve watched them go with a satisfied look on her bushy, little face. She seemed to know that she and I had sent the pups off to a good start. A few days later, a friend of my parents called. I knew that she was a great dog lover, and that her old Golden Retriever had died just a few months ago. She began by telling me that she wanted my help in selecting a large breed puppy, and ended the conversation by saying she would come to meet Sauve the next day, with a view to adopting her.

The next morning Joan arrived with a friend. Sauve, with absolutely no prompting on my part, ran directly to Joan and threw herself over on her back in an ecstasy of wiggling. When Joan walked, Sauve bounded at her feet, when Joan sat, Sauve lay on her feet. It was definitely love at first sight.

The next summer, I saw Sauve again. My baby son and I went down to the beach for the day, near Joan’s house, and stopped in for a visit. As we drove through the magnificent countryside, the air filled with the scent of wild roses, I wondered if Sauve would recognize us. We pulled in to the driveway and a little, black dog darted out to meet my car. “Beware,” she barked, “this house is well guarded!”

I got out of the car. “Sauve?” I called. Suddenly, the barking stopped, and with a look of sheer delight she threw herself at me. She was full of joyous energy, bursting with health, and her coat was shiny, thick and springy. Joan came out of the house then, and laughed to see us together, “I see the welcoming committee has done its job !”.

Sauve and I, entangled on the grass, laughed back up at her. Life was very sweet.

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"The Waltz Puppies"

Cleo & The Waltz Puppies

In the late summer of 1998, on a beautiful morning, I drove down to Bristol to see a new client. The house was on a gentle rise, set back a little from the sea, amidst newly mown fields. A long, low building, it had a wide circular drive and a massive double front door. I rang the bell and was admitted by a maid with a thick Spanish accent, who brought me into the living room and told me that my client, Mrs. Quinn, would be with me shortly. It was a lovely room, with huge windows facing the garden, and an extraordinary art collection. From ancient to modern, from artists I recognized to many I did not, I was looking at an amazing collection. Paintings, sculpture, unusual objects of many kinds, it was like a little museum of eclectic taste. On one side was a large glass cabinet, double sided so one could see through it to the room beyond, filled with an enormous number of decorative eggs. Eggs in marble, glass, metal and wood, eggs both small and large, each set in a little wooden holder. As I stood admiring these, my client came in, apologizing for keeping me waiting. She was a beautiful woman, probably in her late twenties or early thirties, with a casual elegance and a friendly and open manner. She introduced herself as Kathleen Quinn, and asked me to come out to the patio, where the dogs were.

As I followed her, I remarked on the beautiful collection of art, and she said that it was one of her husband’s interests. “He likes to both collect and create art himself. He enjoys exploring different artistic mediums. He does some acting but just now he’s more interested in painting. He’s out in the studio right now, “ she said, “painting, but he should be coming in soon.”From the off hand way she spoke, I imagined her husband as a lawyer, or perhaps a doctor, who enjoyed doing community theatre and dabbling in paint.

As we went through the door onto the enclosed patio, two little white dogs came running to greet us, barking excitedly. Kathleen told me that the Westie was a male named Cesar and the Maltese was a female named Cleo. Both were about ten months old, and neither was housetrained. Teaching them to be housetrained and to come when called were Kathleen’s priorities. As part of my routine questioning, I asked if Cesar had been neutered and Cleo had been spayed, and the answer was no to both. When I asked why not, Kathleen said her husband was a bit old fashioned and didn’t like the idea. I explained that not only was it better for both their behavior and their health, but also it was going to be very difficult to housetrain Cesar unless he was neutered since part of the problem was that he was lifting his leg to mark territory in the house and leg lifting is a hormonally motivated behavior. I went on to add that if not altered the two dogs would also breed. As I was saying this, I picked up Cleo, and discovered immediately that not only was she pregnant, but she was due fairly soon ! Under all the fur her belly was quite swollen and her nipples were already large. Puppies were definitely going to arrive within a couple of weeks.

I heard a man’s voice speaking behind me, and Kathleen glanced up and said, “Here’s my husband now – will you explain to him that we need to neuter Cesar?” “Of course, “ I replied, turning in my chair, and found myself looking up at Anthony Quinn, the famous actor. I was flumoxed. Although I had heard that Anthony Quinn had bought a house in Bristol some years before, it had never occurred to me to connect this to Kathleen Quinn. As a New Englander, I just don’t anticipate meeting movie stars, as one might in California or New York City. I did my best to act relaxed and the next thing I knew we were deep in a conversation about dog reproduction. Anthony was at this time in his early 80’s, with several grown children, and two young ones with Kathleen, and yet he looked at me deadpan and asked, “How did this happen? How did Cleo get pregnant?” I kept my face equally straight, and said, “In the usual way, I expect,” and he burst out laughing.

As it was already noon time, I was invited to lunch, and over a delicious meal Anthony regaled us with raunchy stories from his life, predominantly inspired by my housetraining recommendations. He was warm and funny and full of the joy of living, able to laugh at himself and the ironies of life. By the end of the meal I had been able to persuade him of the wisdom of getting Cesar neutered, and arrangements were made for the dog to go to the vet the following week. Cleo’s pregnancy, however, posed a problem. The Quinns were soon to depart on a three month trip, and had planned to leave the dogs home with the maids. None of them knew anything about raising puppies, however, and so I offered to take her to my house when they left, and raise the puppies myself. No one knew exactly when the pups were due, since they hadn’t realized that Cleo had been in heat, and so had no idea of the date of conception, but I knew it wouldn’t be long.

In fact, Cleo’s pups arrived just a few days after she came to my house. One afternoon she was out in the garden with me, when suddenly she started screaming and turning around in circles. I picked her up and carried her in to the kitchen, and put her in the whelping box, which was already lined with old towels in readiness for her. Cleo was not a stoic dog, and she shrieked and squealed her way through the birth of two big, healthy pups, and then one tiny runt. The runt was already blue in the tongue when he was born, and despite my efforts I couldn’t get him to start breathing. The other two, a male and a female, were big and fat, and soon nosing her side to look for milk. At first, Cleo was afraid of them, and kept trying to get out of the box to escape them. Eventually, though, she calmed down enough to allow them to nurse if I sat on the floor beside the box and stroked her, but it was two days before she really began to show any interest in them. Perhaps it was that she was really too young to be a mother yet, for although Cleo was sweet and pretty, her mothering skills were not her best point.

Every week, one of the Quinn’s maids would call for an update on Cleo and the pups, to be relayed to the Quinns. She was a charming woman, with a Spanish accent, who always asked after the “poopies”. As they certainly did poop a lot, my young son felt this was perfect terminology.

Because the puppies were half Westie and half Maltese, we decided that they were “Waltz” puppies, a sort of combination of the two words. We named the girl Matilda (for the song “Waltzing Matilda”) and the boy Johann (for Johann Strauss, known as the Waltz King). They were absolutely adorable, looking like two roly-poly Polar bears, and were soon old enough to start exploring. My big male dog, Magee, who is half German Shepherd and half Keeshond, decided that they needed more parenting than Cleo was giving them, and appointed himself to the position of Uncle. He would spend hours sitting beside the whelping box, looking down into it, and reaching in to poke them with his muzzle if they got too rough, or lick them to keep them clean. Cleo, who felt that her duties were discharged if she had remembered to nurse them, was only too pleased to have Magee take over. If the pups were crying for attention, she would sometimes go and stand beside the box, waiting for Magee to arrive. When he did, she would stand up, shake off as if tossing her cares aside, and trot away. As the pups got older, she became even more disenchanted with them, and would often try to jump out of the box while they were still nursing, which would mean their little heads got banged against the side, making them squawl. Magee would rush in, growling, to see what was wrong. I was trying to figure out what to do about this problem, when Magee solved it himself by taking up his place beside the box when Cleo nursed them, and growling at her if she tried to get out.

When the pups were old enough to go outside, Magee again took control of the situation, allowing them only a small area of the garden to explore. He kept them close together so he could watch them both, and never let them too near the gate, which he seemed to feel was a dangerous area for them. As they grew, he gave them a little more space each day, but always insisted they stay together. By this time, the pups were completely weaned onto solid food, and Cleo began to act as if she had no idea that they had anything to do with her. She started yelping whenever they approached her, as if they were going to hurt her. Admittedly, they had sharp little teeth and would still try to nurse on her, but her reaction seemed excessive. I think Cleo had aspirations of being an actress, and took every opportunity to practice her craft.

When the Quinns returned home, I brought Cleo and the pups back to them, as they had decided to keep both pups and not adopt them out. Cesar was delighted to have Cleo back with him, and made friends with the puppies right away. As I drove away, Kathleen and Anthony stood in the door waving, each holding a little white butterball of a puppy. When I got home, Magee was quite depressed. He missed the puppies for several days before he finally cheered up and began to get pleasure again from his favorite sports of squirrel chasing, climbing and retrieving.

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"Three Tiny Rabbits"

It was a warm summer evening, and I was driving home with a friend of mine when we saw a dead rabbit by the side of the road. At least, I thought it was dead, but as we passed it lifted its head. I stopped and went back to see if I could help it, and found that the poor thing was in terrible condition. All the skin had been flayed from its back, and although it could lift its head it didn’t seem able to move the back end of its body. I brought a towel from the car to wrap it in, to take it to the vet, when I noticed something extraordinary. Beside the rabbit’s body lay two tiny rabbit kits, one of whom was still alive ! It seemed the shock of being hit by the car had caused her to deliver the two kits, and she undoubtedly still had several more inside her, since rabbits always have large litters. I wrapped the injured rabbit and her tiny kit in the towel, handed them to my friend Koya, and drove quickly to the vet.

They were just getting ready to close when we rushed in the door. After a brief look, the vet said the rabbit’s back was broken, and she would be permanently paralyzed. She couldn’t live like that, and so the kindest thing was to euthanize her immediately.

“But what about the kits still in her – can’t we save them?” I asked.

“There’s no point in trying,” said the vet, “it is almost impossible to hand raise rabbit kits. They have to be bottle fed every 45 minutes – it’s just too much work.”

I had hand raised many baby animals, and I knew it was difficult, but I was determined to try. Even if I failed, at least they would have had a chance. After a bit more persuasion, the vet finally agreed, but I could see she thought the project was doomed. We then discussed the best way to get the kits out. If she anesthetized the rabbit, it would take longer for the drug to take effect, and some of it would probably pass to the kits, making them groggy and reducing the chances of saving them. We concluded that the best strategy was to euthanize the rabbit by injecting the drug directly into her heart, and then do a Caesarian section instantly. The little rabbit lay quietly on the table, still wrapped in the towel. Despite the pain and fear she must have been feeling, she seemed calm, and I hoped that somehow she knew we were going to try to save her kits. Within two seconds after the injection her head slumped down, and the vet immediately opened her belly and began pulling out kits and handing them to us to resuscitate. There was one vet technician helping us, and there were five more kits. After a tense fifteen minutes, we had two more survivors. The other three were dead, probably killed when their mother was struck by the car. The vet gave me instructions on bottle feeding rabbits, and soon we were on our way back to my farm, with three tiny rabbits in a box.

They were each about 2 inches long, with dense, silky brown fur and large heads. Their ears were small still, and their eyes were not yet open. They curled up next to each other, shivering with stress, and I wished there was some way I could tell them they were safe. We stopped briefly at the pet store to pick up little nursing bottles and KMR kitten milk replacement formula, and then we went home.

At first the kits did not know how to suck from the bottle, but once they figured it out they ate eagerly. It took about fifteen minutes to feed each one, and they needed to be fed every forty-five minutes, around the clock. Koya was staying with me for a few days, and so the first two nights we fed them together. On one feeding I would do two kits and she would do one, on the next feeding we would switch. In this way we were able to sleep for either 30 or 45 minutes every hour before the alarm went off again. Lucky for me she was as determined to save the kits as I was, and willingly gave up a good night’s sleep to help. By the third day, however, we were both pretty goofy from being tired. We began to recite to each other “Time to feed the rabbits, time to feed the rabbits” in a sing-song voice, rather like the donut man saying “Time to make the donuts” and somehow it seemed enormously witty.

When Koya left, the feeding schedule really began to take its toll. I would sit on the bed, with the rabbits in a wide, towel lined bucket beside me, and feed them one by one. I had propped up pillows against the wall behind me, and frequently dropped off to sleep in the middle of a feeding. As soon as the kit lost the nipple, his indignant squeaking would wake me up, and I would get back to work. The whole thing soon became surreal, and I felt that I had forgotten what life had been like before the arrival of the rabbits. When the alarm went off every hour I would go to the kitchen in a trance, mix the formula, and head back upstairs to the rabbits all without ever really waking up. I began to wonder if I had been doing this all my life and had just dreamed a different, rabbit free existence. Luckily for me, at that point my six year old son Ben came home from a weekend at the beach with his grandparents, and reminded me that there were indeed other things in life besides rabbit care.

Ben decided that they needed names, and came up with “Stripe” for the one with a white stripe down his nose, and “Hopper” for the most active one. The runt was the one I had found on the roadside, and Ben said to me, “What is it that you call the littlest one in a litter – is it ‘the dud’ ?” And so “The Dud” he became. As the rabbits were still too young for me to determine their genders, we decided that Stripe and the Dud were boys and Hopper was a girl.

They grew bigger almost as you watched, and soon were sitting up and looking around. By the second week I was able to space the feedings further apart, and felt that sleeping forty-five minutes in between feedings was a great luxury. I became a bit more human, and began to see a possible end in sight to rabbit care. Of course, it wasn’t just the endless bottle feeding that they required…they were still unable to relieve themselves without help, and so before and after each feeding each little bunny bum had to be gently wiped with a cloth to stimulate them to go, and then the resulting tiny mess cleaned away. At least this meant that for the first two weeks I didn’t need to change their bedding !

By three weeks they were beginning to hop around the bed while they waited to be fed, and had almost doubled in size. They recognized me as their adoptive mother and would follow me around the room, begging to be fed. After eating, they would curl up beside me to nap, but they were still so tiny I was afraid of accidentally hurting them when I moved in bed and so I would return them to their bucket. I offered them some grass, and they took to it immediately, holding it up in their paws to munch. I began to lengthen the time between the feedings, and life became almost normal again.

Then one morning Hopper seemed listless and didn’t want to finish her bottle. Their little bellies had always looked plump after eating, but hers seemed bigger than usual despite having eaten less. By mid morning I was convinced something was wrong, so I called the vet. It was a Sunday, and the vet on call didn’t know rabbits. He suggested I bring her in the next morning, when the rabbit vet would be in. By evening, Stripe was listless too, and Hopper’s belly was swollen to twice the normal size. After several more phone calls had not found a vet who knew rabbits, I decided to take them up to Tufts Veterinary Hospital, an hour away. During the ride there, little Hopper breathed her last. I was frantic as I ran in to the hospital with poor little dead Hopper, a swollen and miserable Stripe and the Dud still looking perky. The vet knew immediately what the problem was, but was unable to save Stripe, who died later that night. The vet told me that at a certain age, if a rabbit isn’t weaned the bacteria that naturally exist in the intestines and stomach suddenly start to multiply, causing massive toxicity. I could hardly believe that the milk I had been so diligently feeding them had suddenly killed them! I was terribly worried about the Dud, but the vet said if we immediately stopped the bottle and gave him only grass and rabbit pellets he would be fine…so long as the toxic build up had not started yet. If the Dud made it through the next 24 hours, we would know he was safe.

And so, throughout the remainder of the night, all the next day and well into the following night, I sat watching the Dud, and hoping with all my heart that he would pull through. The first night, I lay down in bed, but I couldn’t sleep. Every few minutes I felt the need to check on him, make sure he still seemed well. When he finally curled up, nose under his front paws, and went to sleep, I became so nervous that I woke him up and made him hop around the bed a few times, just to reassure me. The poor little fellow must have thought I was crazy. I kept telling him that he had to live, surely Fate could not be so cruel as to save him from death when his mother was struck, save him from death when he was so cold on the roadside, save him from death by having us find him…only for him to die now from the very milk that had fed him! I felt as if my surreal rabbit-feeding life had turned into an equally surreal nightmare.

By midnight of the second day, I finally decided the Dud was safe, and went into Ben’s room and woke him up to tell him, as I had promised I would. He gave me a hug and a beautiful smile, and said “ That’s my Dud – he’s as strong as anything! Now I can sleep happy.”

After that, things went smoothly. Little Dud grew up quickly, as rabbits do, and soon was spending his days in a big outdoor pen, but every night he still slept peacefully in the old bucket, beside Ben’s bed. After a few months, however, his wild nature began to reassert itself, and he became more skittish around us, and finally escaped from the pen and refused to be caught again. Since we live on a farm at the end of a dead end street, he was fairly safe roaming the garden, and we would see him peeking at us from the bushes from time to time. Eventually, he began to spend more time in the surrounding woods, and showed up in the garden less and less. To this day, when I see a rabbit on the lawn, or watching me from the edge of the woods, I still wonder if it is the Dud. Since he had such a charmed life, it does not seem impossible to me that he might still be alive, a very old but happy rabbit of ten years!

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"The Fortunate Pig & The Amorous Duck"

Quentin, 6 months old

It was a fine, spring morning and as I sat typing at the open window, I could see Quentin the pig lounging in the sun in his mud pit. He shifted his huge, pink bulk a little for greater comfort, and contentedly nuzzled the side of his snout deeper in the mud with a moan of pleasure. He was the very image of peace and happiness. Watching him reminded me that his life was not always such a muddy delight. Several times he has come close to death, and knowing that makes me appreciate his happiness all the more.

Although not particularly large for a pig, Quentin is a formidable size for a pet. His shoulder is higher than a table, he is about six feet long, and weighs over 500 pounds. He came to live with us three years ago, when he was probably six months old, and only the size of a very large dog. He is pink skinned with a lot of long, thick white bristles for fur, small brown eyes, large ears that flop forward and two enormous, sharp tusks protruding from his lower jaw. He is a” farm pig” – probably a Yorkshire cross - and not a Vietnamese potbelly.(When I first told my then ten year old son I was going to look at a pig to adopt he asked if he was a potbelly and I answered “No, he’s a meat pig.” He gave me a jaded look and responded, “As opposed to what- a milk pig or a wool pig?”)

I had always wanted a pig, and figured eventually one would arrive in my life. When I heard through an animal rescue friend that there was a homeless pig at the local animal shelter I went to take a look. Good thing I arrived when I did, too, as the Animal Control Officer told me he had been planning to shoot him later that day and turn him into dinner. He told me the pig had been found wandering around a suburban neighborhood, and he had managed to trap him in a large dog crate. The pig was clearly not a pet but a commercial farm pig as he had a metal tag with a number on it stuck through his ear, and was wary of people. He had what looked like severe road rash all over his left side and his head, and so it was presumed he might have fallen off a truck. Since six months is a common age for pigs to go to the slaughterhouse, this seemed quite likely. The ACO had waited a few days to see if any of the local farmers reported losing a pig, and when no one did he decided to “adopt him into my freezer”. He was quite annoyed when I said I thought that having escaped the trip to the slaughterhouse and survived the fall off the truck he had more than earned the right to enjoy the rest of a long and peaceful life on my farm.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to get him home, but the ACO somewhat grudgingly came up with the solution – putting him into the same large dog crate he had originally trapped him in. Together we cautiously slid it in to the cage the pig was in, and backed him into the corner with the crate door open towards him. After much distressed squealing and grunting he finally charged straight in to it, hitting the back of the crate with such force that he pushed it half way across the cage floor. As he tried unsuccessfully to turn around I managed to slam and latch the crate door, not a second too soon because he stopped trying to turn around and started to back out. Dragging the crate to my station wagon was made all the more difficult because the pig alternately charged forwards and backwards, making the crate lunge and skid with each blow. Between us we heaved it into the back of the car, and then the ACO kindly followed me to my farm to help me unload. His attitude had quite changed during these proceedings, and he seemed to have gotten over the loss of a freezer full of pork chops. Indeed, he seemed to have come to regard the entire effort as a sort of impromptu rodeo, and I imagined he would tell the tale many times in the future.

When we got to my farm we reversed our process and opened the crate door once we were safely closed into a horse stall. The pig immediately backed out of the crate, and did a couple of fast laps around the stall looking for a way out. Finding none, he went and stood with his head in the corner, pretending we weren’t there. I brought him a bucket of water, a pile of straw for bedding and a bowl of dog chow, which he had been fed at the shelter. He quickly ate the chow and then tunneled into the straw and lay down with a happy sounding grunt.

Over the next week he learned that my approach might signal the arrival of a meal, and began to grunt and squeak eagerly when he heard me coming. My son and I spent quite a bit of time with him, making friends, and to my surprise he soon got over his nervousness around us and became affectionate. He had certainly never been anyone’s pet, and had no reason to feel kindly towards people, yet he responded quickly to our overtures, and we began to trust each other. We discovered that he loved to be scratched all over his body, especially on his belly. It seemed to hypnotize him, and the offer of a belly scratch would cause him to immediately stop whatever else he had been doing. As the scratching hand traveled down his side he would close his eyes and begin to grunt softly and rhythmically, as if he was purring. Then he would lean up against the wall and slowly slide down it until he was on his side. Finally, he would lift up a hind leg and shift around almost onto his back, the very picture of a pig in ecstasy. He would remain there, piggy purring, for as long as you continued to scratch him, and even after you stopped he seemed dazed for awhile.

By the second week he was so well adjusted to living with us that I decided it was safe to let him loose in the paddock, without fear that he would immediately break through the fence and escape. When I opened the stall door he stuck his snout out and stood still for a long time sniffing the air suspiciously. Finally he stepped out, putting each hoof down cautiously as if the ground might be hot, and made a slow circuit of the paddock. When he arrived back at the stable door, he suddenly flung up his head, gave a loud, joyous snort and began racing around the paddock as fast as he could. Ears flapping wildly, he galloped in circles and figure eights, grunting and squealing. Every few minutes he would stop abruptly and lift his snout high, snuffling loudly as he sampled the air. Then he would be off again on another mad gallop, bucking like a horse, changing direction in a cloud of dust, tail wagging all the while. After about half an hour, he stopped running and began to explore in earnest. First everything had to be carefully smelled, and anything movable had to be overturned with his powerful snout. The tip of a pig’s nose is a very tough ridge which is used for digging in the ground and turning over things. Within a very short time he had rooted up half the paddock into holes and trenches and turned over all the smaller rocks. While trying to move one of the huge boulders on the north side he made a discovery – it felt great to scratch his body against it ! Excited by this new idea, he went from rock to rock, experimenting to find how to use them to best advantage. The short, narrow one made a great belly scratcher if he straddled it, the tall one with the overhang was just right for between the shoulders….It was fascinating and heartwarming watching him enjoy himself.

As the months went by, Quentin continued to grow, and grow, and grow….I called a friend of mine who is an animal trainer and has several performing pigs and asked him some questions about feeding and training pigs. He told me that although they slow down as they age, they never really stop growing ! I suddenly had visions of a pig the size of a truck….We discovered that he liked to eat almost any kind of food, but was not fond of carrots or pickles. Pumpkins and watermelons were particular favorites, along with any kind of pasta, bread or muffin. At our house, all the scraps go to the dogs, cats, chickens and pig, and so nothing ever gets wasted. Found an old, dried up slice of pizza in the back of the fridge ? No problem – it’s a delicious pig delicacy !

I knew that pigs could be easily housetrained, and thought it would be nice if he could sleep inside at night, but this project was abandoned very quickly. The first time I brought him in the house, he accidentally knocked over most of the kitchen chairs and a small side table in the living room. The second time he used the kitchen table to scratch his shoulder and sent it crashing over, plates and all. I decided he was just too big to be a house pet, and he seemed quite happy in the stable.

Last summer we had been away for a week, and a friend stayed at the farm to take care of all the animals. Somehow the pig got a deep cut on his belly and unfortunately she didn’t notice, probably because he was always covered in mud from his wallow. By the time I discovered it, it was terribly infected. Luckily, he wasn’t acting sick, was eating well and although the wound must have been very painful, he lay still to let me treat it. About 8 inches across and shaped like an X, it was a gruesome sight and smelled terrible. I coaxed the pig onto his side and cleaned the wound carefully and slathered it with antibiotic ointment. Then I called the vet I usually use for my farm animals, but he was away at a conference for the remainder of the week. I spent two hours on the phone trying to find another vet who knew how to treat pigs and would make a farm call, without success. Several people suggested I take him on an hour’s drive to Tufts Veterinary Hospital, but I had no way to transport him since he was now about the size of a sofa and would no longer fit in my station wagon. Hiring a horse van wouldn’t help either, as I had discovered long ago when I had once tried to coax him into one and he had flatly refused. When a 500 pound pig refuses to go somewhere, there is nothing at all you can do about it. You can’t put him in a collar or halter and pull, as the feeling of anything around a pig’s body causes him to panic and thrash around as if trying to dislodge an attacking moutain lion. You can push against him all you want to no avail – he doesn’t move unless he wants to. I finally located a vet who said he knew how to treat pigs but no longer made farm calls. However, if I came by his office he would sell me the medicines I needed and tell me how to administer them myself. I agreed, and hurried over.

Soon I was back home, equipped with various topical ointments and sprays and a bottle of injectable penicillin accompanied by several syringes with large needles. I was supposed to inject him twice a day in the thigh, a procedure the vet assured me was easy. I had injected cats and dogs and my goat successfully in the past, so I was not worried. Silly me.

At the first prick of the needle, Quentin threw up his head, snorted, and leaped away from me. I followed him and tried again, and this time he galloped off to the far side of the paddock. Once again I followed him, but he had become suspicious now and wouldn’t let me near. I decided to put him into the small donkey stall in the stable, so that he couldn’t get away from me. It wasn’t hard to get him to follow me in with the offer of an apple, and soon we were snugly closed in the stall, which was just slightly larger then he was. Squeezed in beside the pig I firmly plunged the needle in his thigh ….and was slammed backwards into the wall of the stable. I lost my hold on the needle, but it stayed stuck in the pig, who bucked and twisted in the narrow space, squealing like, well…like a stuck pig. I scrambled around, desperately trying to get hold of the syringe to depress the plunger, and after collecting several more bruises I finally succeeded and then pulled the needle free.

I called the vet and asked if he had any suggestions. “Try slapping him very hard first to numb the spot.” he said. “That always worked well for me.” I decided to leave the pig closed in the stall overnight rather than risk not being able to coax him back in. The next morning, I went down to the stable and tried the vet’s suggestion. With the syringe poised, I slapped Quentin’s thigh and he snorted and leaped forward, then plunged backward pushing me hard into the stable wall. After slapping the pig twice more and collecting several bruises myself, I finally gave up on the vet’s method. Maybe I was doing it wrong, but it just wasn’t working for me.

I was getting desperate to get the penicillin in to him, so I decided to try building a sort of gate to put inside the stall to squeeze him up against the wall so he couldn’t move around so much. By midmorning I had it ready, and gave it a try. Quentin snorted and squealed and bucked, but I managed to wedge him firmly into the corner and gave him the injection in the muscle of his back since I couldn’t reach his thigh. Dirty, sweating and exhausted, I was extremely pleased with my ingenuity.

That evening I went down to the stable ready to use my squeeze gate again, when to my surprise I saw that Quentin was not in the stall at all – he was loose in the paddock. Not wanting to be stuck with a needle again, he had smashed through the stall gate and escaped. The two by fours and planks the stall gate had been made from hung broken like matchsticks, a tribute to the sheer power of a determined pig. After spending two hours repairing the gate, I tried to tempt him back in to the stall with food, but to no avail – he no longer trusted me and would not allow me near him. It made me feel terrible that my efforts to help him had made him fear me.

Next morning I called the vet to ask if the penicillin could be given orally, but he said it didn’t work very well that way in pigs, and furthermore the dosage would need to be enormous. It was worth a try, though, since I couldn’t get the injections in to him. I went and picked up a large bottle of tablets, and began experimenting on how to get him to eat them. He was supposed to eat twenty of them twice a day, but the pills were large, almost the size of a dime, and tasted extremely bitter. Added to food, he simply spit them out. I tried crushing them and mixing them with food, but then he wouldn’t eat any of the mixture. I tried adding more and more food to the crushed pills to hide the flavor, and I tried different kinds of food. After using up most of the pills in my culinary experiments, I finally found that three large cans of tuna would do the trick. The wound seemed a little better than before, less nasty and smelly, and I was very hopeful that soon it would be healed.

The next morning, however, things had taken a terrible turn. When I went out to see Quentin he was lieing down and did not get up as I approached with my bowl of tuna and crushed pills. He didn’t get up, he wouldn’t eat…he hardly seemed aware of my presence. I took his temperature and found he was burning up with fever. The wound itself looked a little better than it had the night before, but Quentin himself was clearly very ill, and I had no idea what was wrong. Since he wouldn’t eat the pills I tried again with the syringe, and this time he only grunted and jerked when I plunged in the needle.

As I sat beside him in the straw, I noticed something odd. My duck, Moshe, who generally hung around the stable and paddock but never came too near a human, was pacing back and forth beside Quentin in an agitated manner, muttering to himself in quiet little quacks. He seemed oblivious to me, all his attention focused on the pig. Every few moments he would stretch out his neck and nibble gently at Quentin, in a tender, worried manner.

Moshe

I got on the phone again, trying once more to find a vet who would come to the farm, and finally got a recommendation for a Dr. Chandna. I called the number I had been given, and he answered the phone himself. I described the symptoms, and he said it sounded as if perhaps the infection from the pig’s wound had turned inwards and given him peritonitis. If this was the case, he said, Quentin’s life could be in danger, especially if the infection reached the lining of the heart. He asked where I lived, and after looking at a map told me he thought I was about a three to four hour drive from his clinic. My heart sank as he said this, for I thought there was no chance at all he would come so far. To my amazement I heard him saying, “ I can leave after my last client tonight, and should be able to be there by about nine or ten pm…” Incredible! I thanked him over and over, and gave him directions to my farm.

During the rest of the day Quentin got steadily worse, until he wouldn’t even lift his head. The vet had said that one of the greatest dangers was from dehydration due to the high fever, and I should make every effort to get him to drink, but he completely refused. I kept dribbling water mixed with juice and electrolytes into the side of his mouth, but he wouldn’t swallow and it just ran out the other side. I was beginning to think that my dear friend Quentin was not going to live much longer.

At nine thirty that night, the vet arrived. He was a tall, elegant looking man from India, with a calm, professional manner. As he examined Quentin, Moshe the duck stayed close, quacking in an agitated voice. Several times he grabbed the vet’s pants leg in his beak and tugged, as if trying to pull him away. “I know you’re worried about your friend,” said Dr. Chandna, “ I’ll do the best I can to help him.”

He set up an IV line in a big vein in Quentin’s ear, and hung the fluid bottle from a nail in the stable ceiling. He gave him more penicillin and we settled down to wait. Three hours later, as the last of the third bag of fluid ran into him, Quentin finally picked up his head and shook it, dislodging the needle from his ear. He looked around with a bit of interest, and then staggered to his feet and went outside to pee. Moshe followed him, quacking loudly, and then came back in with him moments later. Quentin nuzzled his way into the pile of straw and lay down with a sigh. Moshe waddled up, shook his tail and settled in beside him. “That’s a faithful friend.” commented Dr. Chandna as he packed his things away.

During the next week Quentin slowly improved, eating his penicillin laden tuna and drinking gallons of water mixed with Gatorade to replace his electrolytes. To tempt his appetite as well as to keep up his fluid intake, I fed him watermelons, cantaloupes, peaches and apples, and he began to put back on the weight he had lost. Of course, by the time he was all better, he did tend to look askance at his regular old Purina Pig Chow ! Once again, Quentin had escaped death. Could a pig, like a cat, have nine lives ? If so, I figure this would have been his fourth – he escaped the truck bound for the slaughter house, he survived falling off the truck, he was adopted from the shelter by me just hours before being shot, and now he had recovered from peritonitis. A fortunate pig, indeed!

The duck’s love for the pig has recently taken a new turn. All six years of his life the duck has known my pigmy goat, Maloos, and had never paid any attention to her – until now. Two months ago the duck and the goat were both loose in the garden, and the goat wandered over to the pig’s paddock fence. Maloos and Quentin were sniffing each other with mild interest through the fence, when suddenly Moshe came running up as fast as his short little legs could carry him, flapping his wings and quacking loudly. He flung himself at Maloos, yanking her fur with his beak, hitting her with his wings, trying to force her away from the fence, where Quentin was standing. For several minutes Maloos tried to avoid him, twisting and turning and moving away, but Moshe persisted. He chased her all the way back to the stable, and she jumped up the step and ran in. It took Moshe several tries, but he finally managed to hop up into the stable, and a moment later the two of them exploded back out in a cloud of hay and shavings, Moshe still hot on Maloos’ heels. Sometimes she ran away, sometimes she turned and waved her horns at him in a threatening manner or even head butted him, but nothing stopped him. He was a duck with a mission. It was quite a spectacle, and for a long time I watched in amazement. At last I decided to put Maloos back in her paddock, and she seemed very relieved.

Ever since that day, Moshe the duck has been completely obsessed with Maloos. He sneaks out of the pig paddock and goes over to the goat paddock where he tries to attack her through the fence. If she is loose, he never tires of harassing her, despite her having knocked him off his feet more than once. He is so completely single minded that he will allow us to walk right over to him and pick him up, and even this does not distract him and he will be twisting and turning in our hands to reach her. When he isn’t busy with Maloos, he stays closer than ever to Quentin, following always a few steps behind him. When Quentin gets in a frisky mood and gallops around the paddock, Moshe becomes frantic in his attempt to keep up. He has never learned to fly, but he runs along in a very upright position, flapping his wings ineffectually and quacking his distress. When Quentin tires of running around and flops down in his mud wallow, Moshe paces back and forth beside him, quacking, as if lecturing him not to do that again! Quentin, a good natured soul, simply ignores him.

So here I sit, on a beautiful spring morning, watching my friend Quentin wallow in the mud, a happy pig, a pig of leisure, a fortunate pig, and I wonder what the next chapter in his interesting life will be!

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