07/01/2025
Pig Tales Week #13. Today Keebler is Hoggin’ the Spotlight!
Good morning, piggy lovers! Jenkins here to bring you this week’s edition of Pig Tales.
As I mentioned in Fig’s tale last week, Keebler’s story is unique. His nickname here is The Million Dollar Pig. While the amount is exaggerated, the fact that he needed six surgeries after arriving here is neither exaggerated nor fictional and is a record for us piggies here at Saving Snouts.
Momma Tj shared with me her concern about him when he arrived in her care.
“Taking on medically challenged pigs is my passion. We are a smaller sanctuary and my background in the medical field makes Saving Snouts a safe landing spot for these pigs that need more care and attention. But I was terrified that he might be the one little guy I couldn’t help.”
While all that is true, and we are so lucky to have Momma’s medical background, I rather think she hasn’t recently totaled up how many of us she cares for. There are 53 of us piggies, three goats, two tripod dogs, seven cats, and the seasonal partridge in a pear tree. While I’m not an accountant like my Auntie Celeste, and the only time I think about numbers is when it pertains to my daily allotment of Nilla Wafers, I think “smaller sanctuary” may be even more exaggerated than “Million Dollar Pig”!
Keebler came from a breeder. And just to be clear, anyone breeding pigs is a backyard breeder. Even though a rescue group called the local authorities about this operation, Keebler was the only animal there that they let be removed from this nightmare situation. That is only because his life was hanging in the balance, he needed surgery immediately, and the breeder was unwilling to pay for it. Every other animal there was sentenced to remain in the dangerous and deplorable conditions Keebler was able to escape.
There is simply no way to sugarcoat the condition that Keebler was in. Please consider this to be a warning. What follows isn’t pretty. It’s so far from pretty it’s on a different continent. Or planet.
He weighed only 20 pounds at two years old because he had been starved by the breeder. He had been sexually assaulted repeatedly by a large group of boars who were about 12 times his size.
The rescuer could see that Keebler had a pr*****ed p***s due to attacks by these boars. It had been chewed off and pulled out and was literally hanging all the way to the ground. The rescuer took him to a vet, who performed surgery to remove his p***s. That vet rerouted the flow of urine from his bladder, and he can urinate normally now.
What that vet didn’t notice was that his re**um and a**s had been torn open by repeated sexual assaults by the huge boars as well as attacks by dogs, and when his wounds had healed over, there was a great deal of damage to his re**um and there was no a**s. And no a**s, of course, means there is no way to excrete f***l matter.
When Keebler arrived at Saving Snouts, he was near death. He was septic, cold, and his body was going stiff.
He was septic from the build-up of f***l waste inside his body. F***s had been building up in his body for weeks.
This was a life-threatening emergency the night he arrived. He immediately had surgery to open the re**al area and Keebler’s poor little body finally excreted that built-up f***l matter. The alternatives were unthinkable: Wait until it burst on its own from the built-up pressure or watch him die from sepsis, which ever happened first.
Keebler’s new team of two vets become very innovative after that. They developed a new procedure that would require four additional surgeries to complete the entire process.
Part of the pre-op preparations was creating a temporary mold which would be placed inside his re**al area. The mold allowed Keebler to grow a space in which the vet team could create a functioning re**um during the final surgery.
Keebler then had three surgeries to prep the area for the final placement of the mold.
The fourth surgery was the first attempt to place the mold. Because this entire process was experimental, the placement of the sutures wasn’t quite right. But the fifth operation was successful, and Keebler could finally rest and heal before the big grand finale surgery.
His sixth and final surgery was to remove the mold, and for the vets to create a functioning re**um. Momma even got to be the nurse in the operating room! It was certainly a day of celebration here in piggy paradise!
He has no sphincter muscle, however, so he is unable to control when or where he defecates. I can assure you that precisely nobody here, pig or human, cares about that even one tiny bit! We’re glad to have our friend Keebler here living a care and pain free life next to his beloved Fig.
Despite being named after the famous elf who is the mascot for a cookie company, Keebler will be on a very specific diet and medications for life and will only know The Joy of Cookies on a very limited basis. But he loves cookies and the aroma of them baking, so he stepped up to the plate and became the official baker for everyone here at our piggy paradise. We go through a LOT of cookies here! In the attached picture I made especially for our Keebler, you’ll see him baking in his kitchen while his best friend Fig and the rest of us demonstrate our Cookie Quality Control Skills.
His special diet is why you will always see MiraLAX, prunes, canned pumpkin, and various supplements for him on our Amazon Wish List. For many months, he could only eat puréed baby food, and Momma will purée his pig feed for the remainder of his life. He can eat some fresh fruits and vegetables from time too time, but Momma must check him daily to be sure he isn’t getting backed up. She will need to administer an e***a to him approximately once a week for the duration of his life.
And as if all of that wasn’t enough, the dogs at the breeder were allowed to attack him and they bit off part of his neck. Clearly this breeder was not running a safe operation. But remember what I said above: The authorities that the rescuer called in only allowed Keebler to leave the property. Sadly, there is nothing illegal about that operation. Of course, laws vary by jurisdiction.
You may remember in Charlotte’s Pig Tale a few weeks ago, I appeared as Dr. Jenkins, PhD and provided some information about pig rehoming statistics and how new pig owners can prepare for sharing their home with a pig.
Where you get your pig is as important as the information I provided about preparing to become a pig parent in Charlotte’s tale. As I said above, essentially all pig breeders fall under the umbrella of “backyard breeder” and their primary motivation is money. As we learned from Charlotte, there are many pigs already looking for new homes. Adopting a pig from that type of situation is the best solution if you’re ready to welcome a pig into your life
Keebler was recovering in quarantine when Fig arrived at the sanctuary. You learned last week about Fig, and the very special bond they have.
Momma Tj told me that “watching them make friends will always be one of my favorite parts of having a sanctuary . I hover until they have at least one friend. When they finally find a bestie or a herd of besties I am off crying in the corner, but those are happy tears which are the best kind. Those are the moments I know they are going to thrive here.”
Fig is Keebler’s best friend, soul mate, and constant companion on this journey we call “life.” You will rarely see one without the other and even go to each other’s vet appointments!
What I love is their coloring: Fig is black on white while Keebler is white on black. Keebler is the Yin to Fig’s Yang. Brothers from another mother destined to share their lives together as one.
There is true love and devotion between them, and it is exactly what these two sweet, handsome pigs need to live a happy, contented life here in our piggy paradise. Spending their time together is truly their favorite activity. They both earned the opportunity to simply live a peaceful life together.
Keebler’s will to live was herculean as was Momma’s will to save him. Keebler had endured horrific violence, pain, and injuries before he arrived here, but he put his painful past behind him, strutted into his future with Fig at his side, and has never looked back.
Keebler has been an incredibly lucky pig to have his loving Auntie Robin St. George as his monthly sponsor. His friend Fig also has a loving auntie to sponsor him.
But too many of my potbelly friends are still looking for that special someone to sponsor them.
Would you like to be someone’s auntie or uncle? You can sponsor a potbelly for only $23/month and have your own piggy to love and spoil! If you don’t live close enough to visit us in person, you can FaceTime with your special pig! How cool is that?
If sponsoring one of us isn’t right for you, you can also support us by signing up to be a Saving Snouts Fan ($2/month), a Saving Snouts Supporter ($5/month), or a Saving Snouts Friend ($10/month). You can join via Patreon by following the instructions below.
If you want to sponsor a potbelly, please tell me in the comments who you’d like to sponsor (or I can help you select your special piggy) so I can put you on our list and then head on over to Patreon to sign up.
https://linktr.ee/savingsnouts
Click on “Patreon” and go to the “membership” tab. Select your Support Level, or scroll down to “Sponsor a Potbelly Pig”
You can also access our Amazon Wish List via the link above if you’d like to order food or supplements for Keebler’s special diet.
And be sure to check out all the pictures of Keebler! He has grown up to be a very handsome gentleman!
Thank you so much for reading all about Keebler, and for supporting Saving Snouts in so many ways.
Sending lots of snout kisses to you until next week,
~~Jenkins
