Bacon is swine and dandy with shift to rural lifestyle
Truth be known, he’s a bit of a house hog, but Marie Moldovan loves her Bacon.
The Vietnamese pot-bellied pig gained notoriety in 2010 and 2011 when Moldovan went to Regina’s City Hall to try to save her Bacon from a bylaw prohibiting livestock within city limits. She argued Bacon was more exotic pet than common swine. They didn’t exactly win, but they didn’t really lose either. So long as Bacon never bothered anyone, the city didn’t send the pig packing.
Urban pigs were back in the news in Saskatchewan this spring when a Lloydminster woman, who had been ticketed, challenged a similar bylaw and won a reprieve for her 32-kilogram micro pig Arnold. A judge was persuaded Arnold was a pet, not livestock.
When the Leader-Post recently checked in to see how Bacon was faring, we discovered he and his family had uprooted themselves five years ago and relocated to an acreage in Kincaid, a town in southwest Saskatchewan.
Moldovan says the move had nothing to do with Regina’s bylaw and was more about wanting a rural lifestyle.
But she admits, “if it would have come down to it ... I would have moved for my pig.
“I care about him. He’s like part of the family,” she says. Moldovan took in Bacon when he was four months old after spotting an ad from someone in Regina giving the pig away. “To me, he’s beautiful,” she says. “Bacon’s got this wrinkly, little face and looks like a rhinoceros.”
Even with room to roam in his new digs, Bacon remains a homebody. “He pretty much owns the house,” she says. He has free rein, and gets along with the pet cats and dogs.
“I think it’s because he thinks he’s a dog,” says Moldovan. Bacon even runs to the door and emits what sounds like a “bark” when the doorbell rings. He answers to his name, goes on the occasional walk, and has a leash but is content to stroll alongside his owners even without it.
Bacon the pig goes out for a walk with Claude Landry in the small Saskatchewan town he calls home.
Like any good watchdog, Bacon is not real keen on strangers. He’ll show the visitor to the door until there’s been a proper introduction, usually involving a treat (which Moldovan does try to limit).
Eight years old and tipping the scales at 279 pounds, he’s no Bacon bit. Still, Moldovan shuns any suggestion he might be a porker. The nimble Bacon can run around the yard and jump up on her bed. If the furniture isn’t to his liking, Bacon simply gives it a nudge.
“I keep everything so he has lots of walking space,” she adds.
Bacon is happiest as a pig in a blanket. He shreds it into a nest, making his bed in his favourite room, the kitchen.
The location posed a problem for a time, since he’d figured out how to open the fridge and was helping himself to things other than his regular diet of vegetables. But that fridge has since been replaced with another that’s proven more Bacon-proof.
His knack for opening doors does, however, come in handy, as he lifts and slides open the patio door when nature calls.
“The only problem is, he doesn’t close the door,” adds Moldovan.
For a time, Bacon was one of three little pigs on the acreage, although the house remained his domain. Moldovan rescued a couple of older pot-bellied pigs that she says were forced out of Regina by the bylaw. Ginger and Gimpy, who had their own penned area outdoors, passed away earlier this year.
As she reflects back on her dispute with the bylaw, Moldovan says she can appreciate the need to put some limits in place, noting the abundance of stray cats and dogs in the city, without adding a plethora of pigs to the mix.
“A pet is a lot of responsibility,” she says, adding that not everyone is ready to take that on. “(The animals) grow up, and they’re a lot of maintenance.”
But she’s never regretted bringing home her Bacon.