It’s with heavy hearts that we announce the end of HooptyDoo’s Sanctuary Babe life. He was an OMI original, and he was deeply loved by everyone he bit…which was all of us.
Hooper came to us from one of those terrible “free pig” ads online, and we picked up a terrified, unsocialized, morbidly obese, blind, biting pig. Lordy. What do you even do with that? Know what we did? We loved him. We helped him diet. We got him a facelift. We helped him join a pig family. We made his life as comfortable and easy as possible. We respected his wishes and gave him a wide berth. Hoops lived a very happy, normal pig life in Tennessee with his man-family, the Floydlings.
Hoops was already six years old when we met him back in 2018. That put him into his teens. The damage that obesity does to little legs and joints is something we’ve seen over and over with pigs. We manage it for them for as long as it is humane, but they have a way of letting us know when they’re done. We know them soooooo well as their daily caregiving staff, and we all agreed Hoops was ready. We drove him into the University of Tennessee for the only trip he made there. We sat quietly with him until his last breath. That’s what it looked like to keep the commitment we made to him on the day we accepted him into our care. Until his very last breath.
See you on the other side, HooptyDoo. You were deeply respected and loved by us all.