Piggy

Every spring Piggy sports a black and white mohawk. A long strip of coarse hair defines the length of his back. He is an odd dog, and it suits him. People stop us on walks to talk about Piggy. One lady asked us if he was one of them ridgebacks she’d heard about. Rude or not, we all laughed. Someone drawled, “Ee’s not a Ridgeback, Ee’s a Dingo!” Then we told her his story.

Piggy came from the shelter in Helena. Len and I went to the shelter to check out a Bouvier they had listed on their website. However, when we interacted with her, she was aloof. When we walked her she wanted to get away. The paperwork the pound had on her, listed various ways she had escaped from her previous owners. We worried that our fence wasn’t high enough, and we wanted a dog to love us. We window shopped a little, until we came to Piggy’s kennel. Scrawled in huge letters on a big white poster board were two words that did us in: DEAF DOG. We have one deaf dog, we reasoned, and this one wiggled at our very nearness. We knew he would love our home.

Piggie cannot hear a thing, his vision is weak--we think that at a distance he sees only the movement of outlines and shadows, and we are fairly certain there is some retardation involved. His black and white mottled fur looks like Blue Heeler. His head shape, the texture of his hair, his tail, and his eyes show evidence of Siberian Husky. One of Piggy’s eyes is ghost blue, and the other is mostly brown with ghost blue shapes up top of the iris. Every spring he sheds his Husky hair while panting through warming temperatures. We shave him for his own comfort, and to give our cat hair rollers a rest. We give him a mohawk so we can say, “Ee’s a Dingo!” with our best (not good) Australian accent. So yeah, he’s not a Ridgeback, but a mix thrown together by fate. A mix who sports odd hairstyles and exudes enormous joy at human attention. Our Piggy.

We wanted a dog that would love us. You know the adage: Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it? Piggy embodies it. He earned his name because he is a pig for attention. His previous owners called him Bo. We call him PigDog, Piggy, Pigster, Sters, and Piggy Wiggy Woo………I know, he can’t even hear us, right?

Piggy the Wonder Dog is able to jump through Hula Hoops in a single bound.

He is a happy boy with cognitive issues, and we love him dearly, yes we do.