Tag: physio

The Reality

HRH

As anyone following this blog knows by now, I have a pig I raised from the day after she was born when her mother rejected the litter. She’s had all sorts of problems including apparent back leg paralysis after a bad dose of scour as a 2 day old piglet (she never even got her mother’s colostrum.)

We (myself and my son) rehabilitated her doing our own version of physio. She survived and thrived.

Until the 25th of April past when I went out to feed her and she didn’t come. I could see her but she wasn’t getting up. I went out to her and discovered although she wanted to, she couldn’t get up. I’ve written about what I went through with her in previous posts but I just wanted to update anyone interested.

Now, I’ve been accused of all sorts when it comes to her, mainly by intensive animal torturers. I really don’t care what people who make a living out of making animals’ lives miserable think. I’ve always ploughed my own furrow. I will always look after my animals to the best of my ability and I will decide when any animal has a life not worth living. Believe me, I know when that is having watched my father die a horrible death from dementia.

We’ve had our ups and downs over the last few months. There’s been times I wondered how much longer we could go on. She really struggles when she’s in season. She almost always goes off her food and the last few months has gone cracked (no other way to describe it). She seems to go into a trance and acts completely abnormally becoming convinced the goats (both female), the horses and ponies can somehow “scratch her itch”. So much so she invariably overdoes it trying to charge up and down the fenceline. Eventually when she exhausts herself she barely manages to drag herself into bed to sleep it off for two days. Hormones how are you. I decided to change her diet (I read up constantly on diet and food and pigs are very like humans.) This has made a massive difference and now she is a lot calmer and if she goes off her food, it’s only for one feed.

She obviously did something serious during one of these “events”. And as a result has become very unsteady and regularly falls down. Her back legs seem to get confused and criss cross or don’t spread far enough to balance her. But she has become very adept at getting back up again herself (sometimes after a rest as in the above photo). Often when I see her down I rush out and help her up holding her tail to give her that extra “whoosh”. If she’s not trying herself I wouldn’t have a hope of getting her up. She weighs the guts of 350kgs.

Recently I was out with her and had helped her up. I turned to walk back into shed and she made a noise. I turned because it wasn’t the usual sounds she makes. She had gone down again and the noise was to ask me to come back to help her up. I did and she allowed me to help her back into the shed. I was absolutely amazed and humbled at her intelligence.

Now we have a routine. She mainly gets her food in bed. She has struggled in the past to get up if she lies in a dip in the floor of the shed. But we overcame that by putting a very heavy tractor tyre in it which prevents her sliding down. Then after her breakfast she decides if she feels like going out. Often she doesn’t and will wait until the afternoon. Most of the time she goes out and comes back in unaided. But occasionally she needs help. If I suspect she’s in pain I have an armory of veterinary painkillers and anti-inflammatories my vet has given me. I also have a physio neighbour who is more than happy to come in to help her. She has done a lot of work on horses in the past but a pig was a first. She told me she had been telling her human clients and laughed at how many asked her how she got a pig up on the table……

Recently Carole the physio said she thought she may have a degenerative disorder so we’ve done loads of research and have come to the conclusion it’s a form of muscular dystrophy. She has a lot of muscular indentation (for want of a better description.) Whatever is wrong with her, she’s effectively handicapped. But for now she and I am able to manage it. We will continue to manage it as long as she’s happy, is eating well and able to live as a pig should. If and when she can’t then serious decisions will have to be made.

But anymore than a beloved family dog or cat, why should her life be any different? She is my pig. I adore her. And I will know when she doesn’t want to go on because I know her every thought. I raised her the same way I raised my kids.

The Cut

The first cut is the deepest, right? I haven’t been updating this blog as I would have done normally because a lot has been going on, but also a really hurtful comment cut me to the quik and I just couldn’t pick myself up afterwards.

Normally stuff like that doesn’t bother me. The person who made it is a nasty piece of work, obviously with a lot of personal issues but there are times when comments do hurt.

Anyway I picked myself up as I always do and got professional advice. The professional in question was hugely encouraging and told me never to listen to people like that and always go with my gut. He said to me you know your animal better than anyone else (just like you know your child). Isn’t it interesting how people like the nasty piece of work have neither chick nor child, but yet sit in judgement on those of us who do?

My baby

Life was chugging along nicely, despite the lockdown. One Saturday evening, after a day working outside in garden, I went to feed all. The only one who didn’t appear was Honky. I called her then could see her lying in between my first two paddocks. I went to see what was up. She was lying in the shade and couldn’t seem to get up, even though she was trying.

I rang the vets and Thomas arrived in less than an hour. He checked her thoroughly and said she had a slight temperature but she’d been lying most of the day in the sun. Other than that nothing else wrong. He gave her a vitamin injection, a steroid, an antibiotic and told me to see how she was over next few days. He gave me an antibiotic and an anti inflammatory to inject for the next three days.

Sick and sore

She stayed out all that night, much to my distress but at least it was warm and there wasn’t rain forecast. I dragged out straw and banked it up around her. I left her water and food and checked on her several times before I went to bed. I didn’t sleep much and was back out to her at 5.45am.

My good friend Martha in Wales (a small free range pig farmer) had messaged me and suggested it might be mycoplasma arthritis and she’d need a different antibiotic. I waited until 9am and rang Thomas. He met me and gave me the new antibiotic.

She jumped up the next day after my neighbour injected her. I had tried but couldn’t get the needle in and she had got really distressed. She jumped up after he injected her and started to stagger towards the shed so we went behind her encouraging her to keep going. The relief was immense. At least I knew she was in and had shelter.

She improved daily and was mad to get out. I had fenced off a small area outside the shed initially but she had stumbled out as far as the fence and looked sadly at me. So I made the biggest mistake ever and let her out. I went into the third paddock to check the newly-planted trees and heard a shriek. I think the sow chased her and tried to bite her (re-exerting her dominance). When I got back to her she was distressed and seemed to want to go back to the shed. She was falling and stumbling but I went behind her and held her tail to steady her. I don’t know how I knew this. I think I’d read it somewhere but it worked. She managed to make it back but was really distressed and hyperventilating.

I’m not sure but I think she must have injured her back because she was back to square one. I rang the vet and he suggested giving another course of antibiotics. I went and got them. But then started thinking; I really felt like I needed a second opinion. My neighbour recommended another vet. Initially when I spoke to him he was reluctant to barge in. But I convinced him to take a look at her. He arrived out and thoroughly checked her over, gave her a pain killer and injected her with the second course of antibiotic and anti inflammatory. He said if she didn’t stand up it wasn’t a great sign but felt she would in an hour or so and told me to check her. She stood up two hours after he left!

She perked up initially and then went back downhill. I felt she was in pain and remembered sachets of anti-inflammatories the original vet had given me after she’d had her feet pared. I started her on them and once again she picked up. But she was struggling to walk. I asked another neighbour to have a look at her. She’s a physiotherapist and had told me she’d worked on horses.

She began to treat her daily. After 10 minutes the first day she stood up and had a wee. We held onto each other in disbelief. From then on she was able to stand easily and walk backwards…

Going forwards was more difficult and her right leg didn’t seem to know what to do. Carole reckoned she had the equivalent of a slipped disc. She worked on her every day for a week. She worked on the muscles mostly, hoping that taking the tension out of the leg and lumbar region would relieve the pressure on her nerve.

Physio

A couple of days after the second vet had come out, he rang to see how she was doing. When I told him about the physio his exact words were “wow, keep it up.” He told me she could stay on the anti inflammatories for quite a while and to see how she was on them.

Second time out

After another session with Carole, I left her do do some work outside. When I went to check her later she had vanished. My heart stopped and I ran out to look for her. I found her out at the back of the shed having a root. I panicked and tried to get her back in. She was mad at me but managed to get back in with difficulty – cutting her back feet badly when she fell.

She was back to square one again. This time she was depressed and literally stopped eating. She hadn’t been eating a lot but I had managed to get some food and “nice stuff” into her (mostly fruit). I was really worried. In fact three times I had planned her funeral. Every time I had done, she made a comeback.

I decided to throw the kitchen sink at her one last time and then give up. I knew I had to get her to eat. I kept at her coaxing her to eat, trying to fool her by putting “nice stuff” into her food. The tramp sussed out the nice stuff like a heat-seeking missile and spat her own food out. She even refused to drink. I sat beside her with a syringe and squirted water, then kefir into her mouth. She began to grab the syringe and suck like mad. I balled up her food and she ate some from my hand. Initially she was really gentle but as she got the taste for it, I was afraid she’d bite me and having had to go on two antibiotics in the past after she accidentally bit me, I really didn’t want to go there again.

I got a spoon and she learned really quickly how to eat from it. I’m not sure if the reason she’d given up trying to eat was that sitting up was sore or what. But anyway she’s now back eating and drinking herself. She had a lot of involuntary jerking when she stood up in her back right leg but that seems to have settled. So now I’m hoping she will start to get stronger standing and moving. She’s making a better attempt moving forward and doesn’t seem to lose her balance so easily. She’s not out of the woods by a long shot but she’s much more herself.

The comment made was that I was keeping her alive for my own “ego” and to publicise my blog …….

I’m not sure how being that stressed with worry about her, I couldn’t sleep or eat properly benefitted my ego, but sure lookit. On the positive side I reckon I’ve lost a stone. And as for publicising this blog………

I have never given up easily on anything in life and I won’t give up on her as long as she isn’t suffering or miserable. I saved her life at two days old and fought to keep her alive. We (myself and my son) worked on her when she couldn’t walk, doing our own rudimentary physio on her. I have looked after her every day since, making sure she was healthy and happy and never in pain.

Just because she’s a pig and not a dog or a horse with laminitis, doesn’t mean she isn’t worthy of effort. Just because she’s a pig and most pigs are reared in miserable factory farms, doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve a good life. Just because she’s a pig doesn’t mean she can’t be a pet. Just because she’s a pig doesn’t mean I can’t love her.