Wilbur Pepper Mini Pig Sanctuary

11/25/2025

Snoot rubs during snack time - and an update on how awesome her ears healed!

Also, I want to add that she absolutely cracked me up when eating her snack. My phone battery died 😫which is a real bummer because I would have loved to have recorded her: she had me laughing to tears! 😂
While Elliey was eating, I noticed a growing ring of pumpkin along the outside of the bowl. She would pick out the pieces of pumpkin, setting them down so she could get to the oatmeal better. 😂 After licking the bowl clean, she turned to the pumpkin. I thought - “Cool! She is going to eat the pumpkin now…” Nope! She sucked the oatmeal off the pumpkin pieces, one by one, spitting them back out once clean of all the oats. 😂 Elliey then licked the bowl clean again, just in case there were any oats hiding that she had missed the first time. ❤️🐖🌷

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11/25/2025

Bedtime snacks! 🐖🌷

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11/25/2025

Look who slept next to the yurt in the quartet’s (Sassy, Latte, Molly, Dolly) napping nest last night!!! ❣️❤️🌷 I gave her extra hay and blankets (after snapping these pictures) to snuggle in, and she got her bedtime treat served to her in bed❣️
Elliey tried to come into the yurt when it started raining early this morning, but Stevey Wonderful was not in the mood to share his bed and chased her back out 🙄
I was greeted this morning by a big, beautiful sleepy smile and “Good Morning” snoot kiss!!! 🐽 Elliey loves giving kisses and likes having her snoot rubbed — she will give you a kiss if you just ask, and initiates them on her own 💞 How exciting!!! She also likes to be talked to and is coming to her name!! She even came to the snack area last night when I rang the bell for bedtime snacks - so she already knew that the bell means loves and food! 🥰🐽🐖🌷
Elliey decided to follow Stevey Wonderful around today, lol. Stevey seems indifferent to her in general, but was not too sure about the whole getting a shadow thing, lol.
I will be moving Elliey’s house next to the yurt today. I am trying to decide the best spot - and figure out a way to incorporate her house so she is included in the yurt while still having her own space. This morning, she was exploring the other piggo houses and tried her absolute best to fit into the doorway of Molly and Dolly’s house — it reminded me a bit of the scene from “Alice in Wonderland” when she grew big and was stuck inside the Mad Hatter’s house, lol — I was worried she might have gotten her head stuck, but thanfully she couldn’t get it through the door far enough to get stuck, lol!

Poor Pepa Faith is having the hardest time with this new transition. Besides dealing with the loss of Minnie Pearl, which she doesn’t understand, Pepa Faith always struggles when we get a new piggo. And while Elliey has been here for a while, her integration into the family has just started giving new piggo vibes. Pepa Faith is going through a range of emotions from super clingy to sad, even depressed or angry and snappy. Then she will be okay for a little while. This usually lasts for about a week before she finally accepts that the new sibling really is here to stay. Today, Pepa Faith and I had some important snuggle time when I saw her mope into a piggy house, sadly lay down, staring outside, with tears running down her cheeks. 💔Pepa Faith rarely cries - so it shows she is really struggling with emotions right now.❤️‍🩹

Elliey is such a gift, especially with the struggles of this past week — a different type of rainbow crossing that is better than any pot of gold!! 💛🐖🌷

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11/25/2025

Ganon the Canon decided laying next to me for belly rubs while I try to post wasn’t good enough and I was still too distracted from giving him my 100% attention… so he climbed on my lap instead ❤️🐽💣

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11/24/2025

This beautiful face greeted me when I walked into the piggy yurt right before my live post walk 🐖🌷
Elliey has been hanging around the clearing the last few days starting Friday, then Sunday, and she greeted me early this morning and has been hanging out between woodtime snacking!!💞🐖🌷 I love that Elliey is getting more trusting, more loving and more social!!! She will take treats from my hand, let me scratch her snout, and even gave me a totally unexpected big snoot kiss on Friday after I gave her oatmeal mash!! 💞🐽🐖🌷
Now… to keep the teenagers from bossing and annoying her (haha.). She is starting to stand up to them, which is exciting to see — all part of herd integration. I just like the part where the intimidation is done, hierarchy is established to everyone’s satisfaction, and I get to love on them all! 💞
Such a pretty and sweet girl! Note… I may need a much bigger bed soon, grin, wouldn’t that be a simply fabulous problem! 💞🐖🌷

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11/24/2025

11/24/2025

Thank you everyone for your kind words. I am sorry I have not yet replied to your kind comments, but know they are truly appreciated and I will try to reply this week.
God bless

11/23/2025

It is with a heavy and grieving heart that I am posting this. Today, I found Minnie Pearl. She was so close to home and looks like she had fallen, maybe slipped on the leaves and mud in a particularly slick part of their path, likely while running home. She looks to have hit her head which is likely what caused her to pass. She does not look like she had been in pain - I PRAY she wasn’t. I pray she went instantly and was not cold and alone and scared.
I don’t understand why God did not let me find her right away — I looked where she must have fallen. Looked and looked. Looked more after the dogs seemed to smell something there - but didn’t see anything but fallen trees and branches.
Today, I had the urge to hike and look for her. I was clearing brush and my chainsaw chain kept going loose and falling off, or it ran out of gas after a few branches - odd things.
So I grabbed my bag. Grabbed my walking stick. Grabbed her banana bread. And with a feeling in my gut that hiking was what I was supposed to do, I prayed a prayer that I had not yet prayed: that I would find her, alive and safe (I begged!!) or dead. Just so I would know.
The words had barely left my mind when I saw her. She was lying peacefully on rocks in the creek. A place that I have passed and passed and looked and looked - she wasn’t there before. I think she slipped, fell off a sharp corner from the path, hit her head, and was in that gulley hidden by the branches of a fallen tree. This morning’s storm had strong winds and I believe the winds and rain loosed the fallen tree and swept Minnie Pearl into the pool and onto the rocks where she could be seen.
She has scrapes on her feet like she slid, and a spot on her head where it looks like she hit it. She has a few cuts on her legs that seem to have come afterwards, if she was stuck in the gulley with rocks and branches, those cuts make sense. She has no animal wounds - and for that I am so grateful!
She was still soft and was not bloated when I found her, preserved from the cold temps and water. She just looked like she was sleeping — and I prayed she was still breathing when I rushed to where she lay.
Thank you to Julie Christine who dropped everything, translating words from my sobs, to understand what happened and that I needed help getting Minnie Pearl home. Julie was Minnie Pearl’s unofficial piggy Godmother and sponsor - always bringing Minnie Pearl special treats and loving Minnie Pearl as her own! Minnie loved Julie right back and the two had a special bond. I couldn’t think of anyone else I would have rather had there to help me bring our Beautiful girl home. Julie brought the softest blanket with cardinals on it to lay Minnie Pearl in - my first thought was: oh how Minnie Pearl would love that blanket, steal it and claim it for her own!!! And now it is her’s. Always. Thank you, Julie.
Minnie Pearl is going to be buried next to her brother, Max-A-Million. All of the piggos have been smelling me, smelling her on me, but not understanding since it smells wrong. There will be grief going on here as we all loved Minnie Pearl Girl.

Minnie Pearl was one very special girl. A BEAUTIFUL, BIG, BOLD personality in a beautiful small body!!! She overcame so much and never backed down! She never thought there was anything she couldn’t do or anyone she couldn’t boss. She was the matriarch of our crew, and will be missed more than words can express. She was and always will be our BEAUTIFUL MINNIE PEARL GIRL — a beautiful soul, beautiful girl, and beautiful smile that lit the whole day!!! ❤️🐖💗 She was and always will be so loved!!!!

Thank you to everyone for your prayers, positive thoughts and for loving our Beautiful Minnie Pearl! This is not the news I wanted to be writing today, but I am thankful that she was happy and healthy, doing what she loved. That her face looks peaceful and she doesn’t seem to have been in pain. That God allowed me to find her and that she was in a place that assures me she was being herself - doing what she loved, coming home… and close enough to home for us to bring her back. That she had very little decomposition (some hair loss and some soft tissue damage) and that no animals hurt or defiled her.

I don’t understand why God called our Beautiful girl home - but I do know heaven is all the more BEAUTIFUL because MINNIE PEARL is there!!! 🐖💗

I love you, my Beautiful, funny, always smiling, bossy, unlimited, snuggly, survivor ~ Minnie Pearl Girl!!! 🐖💗

*Please understand that I will be taking some time for grieving and to help the piggos grieve. Thank you.

11/22/2025

I only had my three littlest in bed with me tonight - the extra space was an unaccustomed luxury that felt super weird. Lol
Have been winterizing the yurt and losing snuggle pig bed partners in the process as it gets too hot for them during the night! Tonight, ALL of us kicked off the covers and Pepa Faith, who started the night in bed, ditched us for an outside piggo house to cool off early into the night.
I checked my small thermometer (don’t laugh - it’s a candy thermometer used for cooking but is super sensitive and gives really accurate air temps, and is easy to move around to check temp equality throughout): air temp inside is almost 75° 🫠 That is warmer than most summer nights! Note: that is the air temp of the lower 1/3 of the yurt with the sensitive end of the thermometer pointed towards and maybe 2 ft away from the backdoor which is open to help cool it off a bit! Add in piggo natural body heat and it is well over 120° under the covers! 😰
This is also exciting and encouraging because I have only insulated half the walls (not counting the strawbales), and have gaps between wall and roof that yes, while covered with a good tarp, are not sealed to hold in the heat, while I install a metal roof (which will be layered with straw thatch and a tarp for the winter to prevent heat loss and condensation - same will be done for all the piggo houses❣️).

It’s a heat wave in the piggo yurt - which my need to be renamed: the piggo sauna! 🐖

11/20/2025

HAPPY HAPPY NEWS!! 🐷🍪🐖🌷

Just received a WONDERFUL text from our incredible neighbors who set eyes on Elliey Petunia and Oreo!!!! They said the piggos ran away when they saw them, but if they are that close then they were heading to the clearing!! 🎉🎉
The neighbors did not see Minnie Pearl, but said she might have been with Oreo and Elliey 🙏🏻

Thank you, Jonah Bowling, for this HAPPY news!!!! 🎉🐖🌷🐷🍪

11/20/2025

🎄🎁 A NEW (unexpexted) WPMPS STAFF CHRISTMAS WISHLIST ADDITION: 📱 (cell phone).

In case you wondered… electronics and piggos are not a great combination. Piggos don’t mean to be, well, giant toddlers who don’t realize there are fragile things underfoot… but sometimes there are fragile things underfoot…. or hoof…
Between Princess Peanut slipping and stepping on the lap top screen the other day, and now Stevey Wonderful coming over to give me “please ignore that I am eating the forbidden straw” kisses and snuggles and stepping on my phone -which I had just set down beside me- and cracking the screen through the heavy duty screen protector, our technology is at an 0 for 2 status. 😣
Thankfully!!, my phone is still usable at the moment as we NEED it for communication and media updates!! But I am afraid a replacement is going to be inevitable. 😫 It is an older iphone (the original iphone se) and the cost of a screen replacement may exceed its actual value (such a strange concept to my reduce/reuse/recycle/repurpose/use it ‘til you just absolutely can’t thrifty mind!).
SO…. If any of you wonderful folks are getting a phone upgrade soon or new/different phone for Christmas, and would be willing to donate your current (soon to be old) phone… please shoot me a message!! 📱😊

Thanks! ❣️

11/20/2025

Because what you can’t have is *always* better than what you already have - even when they are the same thing. 🙄🐖💖🌱
Stevey Wonderful has made up his mind that the straw temporarily on the bed for insulation while we work on winterizing the piggy yurt is WAY tastier than the exact same straw in deep piles on the floor of said yurt — straw he burrows into to sleep in every night.
So now, we have a daily “do not eat the straw on the bed” routine. And my bed now get swept free of said straw far more frequently throughout the day. 😂🐖💖🌱

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