Wee Wee loves toys and belly rubs. He naps in a heated dog bed, but prefers resting on top of a person, like a little lap dog.
“He is very much like a little puppy! He runs and plays and even barks like a puppy,” Terry Cummings, co-founder of Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary—a 400-acre haven for rescued farm animals in Poolesville, Maryland—tells BarkPost.
Wee Wee belongs at Poplar Spring because, of course, he isn’t actually a puppy at all. He’s an astonishingly lucky and sweet little piglet.
Wee Wee was found by the side of the road during snowstorm Jonas.
The bitty guy was near-frozen and covered in ice when the Smiths, a Maryland family, spotted him struggling through a snowbank, while they were driving home from a ski trip.
They stopped, picked up the piglet, wrapped him in a sweatshirt, and saved his life.
“He would have died,” Perry Smith, father and restauranteur, told The Washington Post, which first reported on Wee Wee’s rescue. “He would have lasted maybe another 30 minutes to an hour.”
The Smiths cared for Wee Wee for a few days, until the roads cleared. The adorable animal—whose tattooed ear and cropped tail indicate he likely fell off a slaughter truck—was treated as a member of the family.
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Suburban Maryland is a great place for regular families, but not ideal for industrial-sized pigs, and Wee Wee will in time grow to be very Big, perhaps a thousand pounds.
Once the roads cleared, Wee Wee was dispatched to Poplar Spring, where Cummings and her husband David Hoerauf—both vegan advocates, along with animal rescuers—had been preparing for the now-famous pig’s arrival.
“You’re going to be fine, piggy,” Perry Smith said, before his tiny charge’s onward journey. “You’re going to be a good boy.”
Wee Wee has been a good boy at his new home, indeed.
“He is such a friendly pig, and loves all the attention he is getting,” says Cummings.
Being a baby, Wee Wee sleeps and plays a lot. He goes outside for brief spells, since it’s still so cold, but, Cummings says, “he really enjoyed running in the paths in the snow, and he ate some snow.” (You can, and should, observe all this on Wee Wee’s Facebook page.)
WeeWee, the celebrity piglet, reveling in a lap of luxury at Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary.
Posted by Jonathan Balcombe on Saturday, January 30, 2016
When the weather gets a little warmer, and Wee Wee gets a little larger, he’ll move from the house to the barn, where he’ll live with a whole crew just like him—smart, friendly, lucky animals who landed in the right place. Wee Wee will graduate from this remarkable puppyhood into full fledged pigness.
“He will then have four acres of pasture to graze and play in, a creek to splash in,” says Cummings. “And a big warm barn with lots of soft straw that he can cuddle up in with many other rescued pig friends.”