Friday, Jan. 27: The Pig Who Would Be A Dog

In Which Violet is Encouraged to Eat Pig Crumbles but Likes Alpo Better

That says it all. My plan is to photograph Miss V. diving enthusiastically into the dog food and see if Purina will use her in commercials, thereby covering the costs of all the food I bought for her that she won't eat, not to mention the cost of Dotti's eye repopment (for lack of a better word).

Alas, I couldn't take the picture today. My camera battery is dead and of course we can't find the charger. For now, Purina will just have to use its imagination.

Thursday, Jan. 26: Dog Juggling

In Which Debbi Spends Most of the Day Maintaining Animal Peace

Back when I lived in South Berwick and had two dogs, Gretel and Robin, my stay-at-home boyfriend one day complained that he felt like a butler for dogs. All he did all day was let the damn dogs in and out, he said.

(I tried to make life more exciting for him. Once I jumped into a pile of leaves and emerged with a block of wood nailed to my foot and after I hopped about a quarter mile home, he got to drive me to the emergency room. I guess it wasn't enough for him, though. :-(  )

Anyway, I know how he felt, regarding the dogs, especially after today. Every time I went into the kitchen, which is accessed by a gate, I had to think, "OK, now, which dog can be in the same room with the pig and which dog has to be herded out to the non-kitchen living quarters?" Because, dear reader, I cannot afford any more $600 trips to the vet, so must avoid the Chrissie-shih tzu-piglet combination..

We hypothesize that Chrissie, the Aussie, was trying to protect Violet when she attacked Dotti and pulled out his eye. So, assuming Chrissie won't be getting a lobotomy, we predict that she'll strike again if the situation repeats itself.

Ooooh. Lobotomy. I hadn't thought of that before. That might solve all our problems! And be cheaper in the long run, too!

Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012: Storm of the Eye

In Which A Scary Incident Occurs, Precipitated by Pig

I skipped writing on Tuesday, and that's OK, because all the excitement happened at around 9 p.m., and we were too busy taking a dog to the emergency clinic for me to maintain a blog.

What happened was, in brief, two of our dogs got into a fight, and one of them ended up with a rather bizarre injury.

The long story is that

Monday, Jan. 23, 2012

The harness came off today, and Violet squealed as much as she did when it was going on.

Rex is irked with me because I feigned sleep this morning when Violet became entangled

Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012

In Which the Piglet Gains Social Skills

Violet has made some excellent strides in her short tenure as a house pig:

1. She knows where her food is, and who to pester to get it there. I'll be cleaning up the counter and sink and suddenly become aware that a piglet has trotted in and is grunting at me.

Saturday, Jan. 21

In Which Violet Survives My Absence

I left the house at 8:30 a.m. in a mild snowstorm that was greasing up the roads just enough to make my 118-mile trip to Peterborough, N.H., an invitation to die. Before I'd gone 15 miles, my car had spun out over the crest of a hill and come to rest, miraculously, not wrapped around one of the trees at the roadside. Did I turn around and return home to pig and hearth? No, I stupidly journeyed on. Such was the pull of fiddler Rodney Miller and the annual Snow Ball contradance.

I had no qualms about leaving Violet at home with Kayti, who is 13, and Rex, who is watching 61 disappear into the fog of yesteryear.

Vi's Birth Family

Thursday, Jan. 19: Pig in Day Care

In Which Violet Returns to Her Roots

Violet got to visit her mom, aunt and 15 siblings and cousins today. I felt she needed some food, and also I had to go to a four-hour seminar on how to impress potential employers and save the state the cost of my joblessness, a class to which pigs were not invited.

So home she went, and I'm sure she is mightily p.o.'d that I came back and took her away again. I KNOW her mother and aunt are p.o.'d, because they tried to assault me as I stalked Violet around the pen.

So Violet is back, and I keep having brainstorms about raising a pig. For example,

Jan. 18, 2012: From Pigpen to Pigsty

In Which A Piglet Moves into a House and Gets a New Name

When Aimee the Funny Farmer offered to let me take the runtiest of her 16 piglets home, I knew I would not refuse -- even though we already have three dogs, a cat and a guinea pig in the house, and even though the piglet was of a species completely unfamiliar to me.

I picked up the three-week-old female this afternoon. We put her in a box with some hay, closed the box flaps, stuck it on the front passenger seat of my car and closed the car door. After a brief talk with Aimee about weaning strategies, I opened my car door and