ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 28, 1996 TAG: 9607270001
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHARLES TOWN, W.VA.
When a potbellied pig pulls up with his family in front of the sign reading "PIGS, a Sanctuary," he sees pigs just like him munching grass in a field, luxuriating in mud puddles, and generally acting like pigs.
This is not a comforting sight.
One pig named Casey refused to get out of the car. His owner spread blankets on the ground so the jittery animal could walk from the car into the house that serves as the sanctuary headquarters without touching the grass.
"He's not a pig," Casey's owner explained. "He's a prince."
Casey's name inevitably pops up when sanctuary founders Dale Riffle and Jim Brewer talk about their "adjustment cases."
"That pig sat in his pen for four days and just cried because he did not want to be a pig," Riffle recalled.
Both men wear T-shirts that read "Where a pig can be a pig." It's not a reassurance. It is an order.
In Casey's situation, the two men lured him into the back yard with more blankets, rolled them up and left him stranded until he learned to walk on grass.
"Most of the people that tell us the pig won't be happy outside, it's the person who won't adjust," Brewer said. "We view full-time house pigs as subtle abuse."
When Riffle and Brewer started the sanctuary four years ago, they wanted to create a safe place for pigs escaping owners who abused them. Increasingly, the pigs that come here are taking refuge from the families who love them.
The sanctuary was started with just one pig. His name is Rufus.
In 1990, Rufus was sharing a town house in Washington, D.C., with seven college students.
"They were keeping him in a bathroom in the basement because they didn't know what to do with him," Riffle said.
One of Rufus' housemates had gotten a job at Co-op America, a nonprofit consumer agency where Riffle worked. He offered to take the pig.
Rufus was only 12 weeks old when he came to live with Riffle and Brewer, but it wasn't long before he was exerting his influence on the household. A discerning glance as Riffle chewed on a ham sandwich was all the convincing his new owner required to become a vegetarian. Brewer soon followed.
Riffle began reading up on potbellied pigs and discovered that the once-popular pets were being destroyed in increasing numbers at slaughterhouses for pet food. His research revived childhood memories of pigs being slaughtered at his grandparents' farm in rural Ohio.
"After they shot the first pig, the other pigs would run into the barn and they would all run into a corner and face in so you couldn't see their heads to shoot them," he said.
When Riffle suggested starting a sanctuary, Brewer said, "Wouldn't it be fun to come home and have a whole herd of pigs run to greet us?''
Rufus and the two men lived in a camper for six months while searching for a farm. They found a 5-acre tract in Jefferson County none too soon. Word of their plans had begun to spread, and the camper soon became home to eight pigs.
The sanctuary is just minutes away from Charles Town, home to the famous horse races for more than 60 years. Riffle and Brewer keep to themselves in this community of television satellite dishes, cornfields, white-steepled churches and roadside fruit stands. Jefferson County animal control officials say they've never received a complaint about the sanctuary, now home to about 200 pigs. In any event, the only zoning restriction on the property is against mobile homes.
The sign out front - "No drugs, no meat products, no politics, no attitudes beyond this point" - hasn't discouraged some locals from stopping by to inquire about sausage. One man, informed that the pigs were being allowed to live out their natural lifespan, went away muttering, "You learn something new every day."
Brewer helped support the farm by working at a law firm until January; now there is enough money coming in from sponsors so both men work at the farm full time.
Riffle and Brewer are up at 5 a.m. daily and work on the farm until 10 p.m., when they eat their dinner and sack out. Riffle, a high school graduate with no prior experience in construction or veterinary medicine, has built two barns and assisted local veterinarians with spaying and neutering hundreds of animals. Those activities have to be sandwiched between the daily routine of feeding, watering and cleaning. Water bowls, mud puddles and plastic wading pools for the piglets are filled three times daily, and the pigs are fed once each day.
"It's like running a day-care center," Riffle said.
|n n| When visitors reach out and pat Henry's broad side, he jumps back with a startled squeal.
Henry cannot see because his previous owner abused him. Henry has never been beaten over the head with a board or frying pan like some of his pig penmates. Instead, he was fed and fed and fed some more until he was so fat that his forehead slid down on top of his nose, covering his eyes with flaps of fatty skin.
"Henry walks into the side of the barn, he walks into the fence, he walks into other pigs," Riffle said.
Henry had been abandonned in the driveway of a stranger who had come home from church to find the pig waiting in a makeshift pen. She brought him to the sanctuary. When Riffle and Brewer first met him, he weighed 300 pounds. Most pigs at the sanctuary are placed in one of 14 herds based on their age, but Henry qualified for a special group known as the Richard Simmons herd. Riffle and Brewer have discovered that dieting does not work with potbellied pigs, because their metabolism drops with their calorie intake. So Henry and his fat friends are made to run two laps every day around their pen.
"You stand behind them and you push on their butt and tell them to go," Riffle explained. Because the pigs are apt to squat down in protest, he sticks his feet under their derrieres, which doesn't seem like a really good idea. No broken bones yet, though, and Henry has sweated off 40 pounds so far.
|n n| Weight has been a subject of controversy since potbellied pigs were introduced in the United States in 1985. Breeders originally said the animals would top out between 30 and 40 pounds, then revised the estimate to 90 pounds.
According to Riffle and Brewer, a healthy potbellied pig will reach 125 to 150 pounds by the age of 3 or 4. Unless they're kept on a strict diet, they turn into monsters like 250-pound Doris the Pig-O-Saurus - still miniature compared to the average 800-pound farm pig.
Riffle and Brewer limit their pigs to two cups of Pig Chow a day. Although many potbellied pig owners are told they can keep their pets' weight down by letting them eat grass, Riffle said grass actually has a high calorie content so he restricts grazing time. The grass diet is one of the many myths Riffle and Brewer say have been spread by unscrupulous breeders.
Potbellied pigs, native to Vietnam, were brought to North America by a Canadian zookeeper who saw one in a European park. They quickly spread across the border into this country, selling at $10,000 to $15,000 apiece. The highest price ever paid for a potbellied pig in this country was $37,000.
"They were promoted as the pet of the '90s, the yuppy puppy," Riffle said.
As potbellied pigs multiplied and were interbred with other miniature pigs and even farm pigs and wild boars, their value plummeted. Today, they can be purchased for as little as $10. In the stockyards, they are sold to slaughterhouses for 3 to 4 cents a pound.
|n n| At the sanctuary, there is a special pen reserved for wimps.
Wimps have trouble adjusting to herd life. Behavior that terrorized their human families - butting heads and goring - is unimpressive to other pigs, so wimps usually drop to the bottom of the pecking order. Poncho, who was more than a match for three professional animal trainers when they tried to forcibly remove him from his home in New Orleans, broke out in hives his first night with other pigs.
"We had to give him Benadryl," Riffle said.
Even well-adjusted pigs will be aggressive because they view their human families as their herd. At about a year and a half, they are old enough to begin defending that herd and will often bite and gore strangers entering their home.
About a year later, a new instinct kicks in. The pig is now old enough to assert its dominance in the herd, and he may turn on his owners.
Riffle said the pigs mellow out again at about 4 years old, but those two and a half years of pig puberty can seem a lot longer.
Riffle and Brewer believe potbellied pigs are wild animals and should be treated differently from dogs and cats, which are the results of centuries of breeding.
"They're not a creature that God created. They're manmade. These," Riffle said, waving his hand at a cluster of pigs in a nearby pen, "are still God's critters."
|n n| A rental van pulled up in front of the sanctuary at 4:30 one morning. Three people dressed in black with hoods over their heads jumped out, herded two pigs from the truck, handed $150 to Riffle, then drove away without a word.
Most of the people who bring their pigs to the sanctuary are unwilling to accept any long-term responsibility for their pets. Riffle and Brewer ask owners to provide support for one year, and they try to get six months up front.
"We know that after three months we'll never hear from them again," Brewer said.
Most of the $4,000 a month needed to run the sanctuary is paid by a group of 5,000 supporters, the vast majority of whom have never owned a potbellied pig.
The sanctuary's nonprofit status enables Riffle and Brewer to solicit donations, hire intern veterinary students and seek grants. The sanctuary also attracts volunteers who camp out on the grounds and spend weekends and holidays cleaning pig pens and performing the unending task known as "poop patrol."
With the sanctuary near maximum capacity, the two men now try to help owners find other homes through a national network they've organized. They've placed 400 pigs through contacts with animal lovers in all 50 states.
Riffle and Brewer also allow pigs living at the sanctuary to be adopted. There are restrictions, however. They check to make sure the animals will be living in a pen with other pigs and in an area where pigs are permitted by local zoning laws. They do not place a pig with a family that includes small children.
The two men recommend that owners using the national network follow the same criteria in finding a new home for their pets. If an appropriate place can't be found, Riffle and Brewer recommend owners euthanize their pets, arguing that a humane death is better than the slaughterhouse.
|n n| "My pig is no longer with us, but I come here because I love pigs," said M. Miel Iles as she sat in the piglet pen clad only in a sports bra and a pair of shorts.
Actually, Boris was still here waiting for Iles. His cremated remains had been saved in a cream-colored plastic box the size of a family Bible.
Iles gasped as she took the container from Riffle.
"It's really heavy," she said. "He weighs as much as he always did."
She chuckled at her own joke, but tears were spilling down her cheeks as she retreated to a couch for a hug from her mother, Virginia.
Boris was one of 70 pigs that didn't make it through the winter. Pneumonia is the biggest killer at the sanctuary. Vaccines developed for farm pigs don't help much.
Most pigs at the sanctuary are cremated and either kept on a bookshelf for their owners to claim or buried at the sanctuary. The bigger ones are simply buried because the veterinarian has a weight limit of 150 pounds for cremations. Actually Boris was 30 pounds too heavy.
"He slipped through," Riffle confided in a funeral parlor murmur.
Soon, Iles was feeling better and recalling highlights from her life with Boris. Like the day he attacked the baby sitter and barricaded her in a bedroom. Or the many times he gored Iles' ex-husband.
The gorings didn't create any ill will. Both Iles and her ex-husband have been regular contributors to the sanctuary since they divorced and sent Boris here. They plan to split the ashes.
|n n| Riffle and Brewer would like to put themselves out of business by educating the public about potbellied pigs, but they know some of the piglets they have now will live 15 or more years, and there are a million more potbellied pigs in this country.
The two men are beginning to look for a larger sanctuary and considering a mve to Florida, where the weather more closely resembles the pigs' native Vietnam.
Wherever they end up, they'll re-erect the sign out front that reads "You have nothing to fear and here your story ends. Your troubles are all over because here you have a home."
They've committed the rest of their lives to making sure that home exists as long as it's needed.
"If I were to die and be reincarnated, I'd want to be a pig that lives here," Riffle said.
LENGTH: Long : 240 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WAYNE DEEL/Staff. 1. Dale Riffle (left) and Jim Brewerby CNBfounded PIGS, A Sanctuary, now a home for more than 200 Vietnamese
potbellied pigs, many of which came from abusive backgrounds. Henry
(above, left) was grossly overfed but has shed 40 pounds under
sanctuary care. 2. M. Miel Iles (left) came to the sanctuary to pick
up the ashes of her pig, Boris, who died last winter. Volunteer
Susie Coston (above) tends to the pigs' bedding. 3. This sign lets
visitors know what to expect inside the sanctuary. Still, some
strangers come seeking sausage. 4. Dale Riffle's daily duties vary
from gentle to strenuous at the sanctuary. 5. He gives Weezer
(above) a little scratch and lends Heidi Ho (below) a helping hand
after she was stuck in a mud hole. Weezer and Heidi Ho both have
physical handicaps. 6. Rufus: Premier pig. color. Graphic: Map.
color.