BY CHERYL BENTLEY
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
Published: May 9, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla.—For 11 days, Stinky was laid low, suffering from wounds from an attack by a pit bull terrier. His owners didn’t care enough for their pot bellied pig to get him medical care.

As so often happens when pigs are in trouble, Lynne BoismierÖ was called. Boismier is the founder of the nonprofit Noah’s Ark Potbelly Pig Rescue in New Port Richey.

The first order of business was to get Stinky to a veterinarian.

Then came the hard part. Although his physical wounds were serious, they paled next to his emotional trauma.

“He was terrified,” Boismier recalled. “He wanted to do nothing but bite us.”

But Stinky couldn’t hold grudges. After three months, said Boismier, “His personality just bloomed.”

Boismier changed Stinky’s name because he deserved one with dignity, she said.

Stinky became Oliver.

Today, Oliver closes his eyes in bliss, his mouth assuming a sweet little piggy smile as Boismier rubs his back.

He loves to be petted, she said. He also is something of a Boismier shadow. “He loves to follow you around. You can be far away and you call Oliver, and he comes running.”

Oliver is only one of 124 porcine residents of the 31-acre sanctuary for homeless and abused pigs that have taught Boismier life lessons she is hard put to describe.

“You have to be around them,” she said. “They have such a bonding.”

That bonding can run deep. Pigs have been known to starve themselves to death when their owners abandon them, Boismier said.

Their tie to their human is often the closest one they have ever known, she explained. Most were obtained when they were tiny and cute piglets. Their humans often did not have the foresight to plan for the day when some would tip the scales at 150 pounds.

All of her pigs have hard-luck stories. Some have been locked up in homes and abandoned when their humans move, she explained. Others come to her after having been used as bait for dogs. Others have been hunted with arrows.

Some never quite recover from the abuse, but most do, she said.

But that can take time, as in the case of Gunter and Tanner. They were used as bait for pit bulls and watched their brother being killed by the animals. It took four years before the pair learned to trust humans.

Boismier began her rescue operation in 1997 after a friend talked her into talking over her pig rescue. She had had only one pig before that, Sir Percival Pig, whom she had rescued after his mother had been killed by hunters.

She didn’t feel qualified to run the rescue, Boismier said, but the woman who has always had animals beginning when she was a child growing up in Clearwater couldn’t turn the pigs away.

Most of her pigs are Vietnamese pot-bellies, a domesticated pig with pot belly and straight tail that originated in the Southeast Asian land.

Boismier also has a few farmyard pigs as well.

All have been spayed and neutered, thereby cutting down on aggression and odor.

The animals live together peacefully in a loose ranking system that makes room for the individuals who are too traumatized to participate fully in any tight social organization. All are kept in enclosures during the evening for their protection.

Caring for them is a full time and costly operation, Boismier said. She spends six hours a day feeding them and another two hours cleaning.

She spends $160 a week on pig chow and so far this year has spent about $2,500 on veterinarian services.

“Sometimes, I’m so tired I don’t want to get out of bed. But then I come out and see all their little eyes and their little faces, and it makes it worth it.”