Imagine living your life in a home, at first being loved and pampered. Taken places, and shown off to everyone.Then
you grow up, usually larger than the breeder promised your family you would be. You love your family. They are all you know, and you would do anything to be with them and around them. Pigs develop bonds that are very deep and lasting. New people to them are like new people to us, scary and they are fearful of them. Pigs do not like change at all. They very much love routines.
Photo Credit: Hog Haven Farm
Now you are in need of a new home. Let’s assume you are lucky and get to go right into a foster, or adoptive home. Everything you knew is gone, and now your world is upside down and sideways. You have new people, animals, and (gasp) another pig or two to live with. You get picked on, or you fight for dominance. After all who wants to be low pig on the totem pole? Do these strangers not know how you like your blanket warmed at night? Do they not know you do not like that food they feed you? What about that mean old dog that gives you the stink eye and threatens you every time they look the other way? You just want to go home to YOUR bed, and YOUR family, and YOUR food, and YOUR way of life. What did you do to deserve this? You won’t do it again if you can just go home. You promise yourself. Given time and love you will adjust. But it does take a toll on you, the pig.
Photo Credit: Prissy & Bomber’s Pig Pen
Oh but what if that is not the scenario. What if you end up at a sanctuary?
You were a house pig, and a spoiled one at that. Now you have to sleep where? Outside, in a barn, with other pigs, who want to bully you? No belly rubs or tucking in at night, no loving words from mom, no cat to cuddle with, you are now the bottom of the pecking order, and you are scared. You are the outcast. No matter how great the sanctuary is, it is always a far cry from a loving home. Vastly different for the house pig life you had. Life will never be as you once knew.
Most will and do adjust, given enough time.