PIG TALES DOTTY’S TROTTERS

By Rachael Adams

brim of my snout – so the expression “sweating like a pig” is a load of rubbish.

“Then I got to be a middle-aged piggle. With gnarly horny trotters, very unlike the flawless isosceles triangles of my youth. Though I did try my best to grind them down on my daily 56,000 laps of the date trees. Nevertheless, by the time I was eight, the mighty Fiskars just couldn’t cut it any more.

“So the mad bat scaled up to horse hoof cutters and sharpened afresh. She thought that, at 12.50 Euros from Sa Cooperativa, surely these manly, farrier-like tongs would do just the trick. Except she needed two hands to operate them, and so now also needed an extra helper to feed me grapes.

“A grape to the left so I can get her right toe!”, she cried. I gobbled it up as fast as I could and swiped my gnashers right! “Two grapes to the right!” Swipe left! Swipe left!’

Like some mad porcine Tinder, it was very fast-paced and easy to make mistakes. Though, instead of ending up on the wrong date, I’d end up with wonky trotters and nipped blood vessels. This would simply not do.

Pigs that live beyond 6 months of age will likely need their trotters trimmed at some point. Over the last ten years, I’ve wrestled tooth and nail to keep my pot-bellied pig Dotty’s feet tidy.

I bought Dot from a small farm in Binidalí for 20 Euros. Back then, she was a two-month-old squealing little black thing, with two white trotters and a white tip on her tail. Her father was a nonchalant brute called Bruno who swaggered about opening doors and getting into cars if he could. She now weighs 70 kilos and as she has aged, her trotters have got thicker and harder. Over to Dot…

“When I was a baby, my trotters were lovely and trim – they were naturally shaped like an isosceles triangle. Trotter perfection! Sometimes my owner would paint them just for fun.

“One day, though, when I got to be about one year old, she accosted me with some rose pruners. Four snips later, she was gone in a flash and I got a nice vanilla yoghurt for my troubles.

“Then my trotters started to get thicker and harder, and my owner had to have the cutters sharpened every six months pre-combat. It got harder for me to earn my yoghurt as I quickly learned to pull my feet away, or just run away completely. You see, I´m a prey animal just like a horse. I hate having my feet off the ground!

“Undeterred, the human started creeping up on me in my sleep! But I won again because I have four nails to a trotter and four legs, so she’s never going to manage 16 snips in one whack. HA!

“Next, she started luring me into the bathroom and lining the floor with foam mattresses. She’d put a bowl of dog biscuits in the middle of them and try to get the clippers under my trotter without me lifting my foot from the floor. It was quite stressful because I’m a fat little uncooperative sod. Importantly, there’s a real risk that I might have a heart attack. We’d both get very sweaty, yet after half an hour or so I was sorted. By the way, I only sweat on the upper

“Exhausted, my owner sat back on a rock and had an epiphany: James Herriot wrote about an unruly pig in the 1940s: the bewildered sow had just produced her first litter and was having none of it. They squealed and shrieked and screamed bloody murder, x12! So the kindly farmer got the poor lass a drink. Four pints later and she was out for the count, flat on her side dreaming woozy piggy dreams whilst her youngsters gorged happily on their first feed.

“This was before anaesthetising was commonplace. And since I’m a potbelly, I have to have some special anaesthetic anyway, or I’ll have a funny reaction. Back on the rock in Menorca, my owner decided to try some stiff stuff too. “To calm our nerves”, she said.

“At first, she thought I might like something very hoppy and strong, like a double malt Voll-Damm sort of thing. Of course, that tasted cack and I told her so too. She said, “Well, tough, I’m not wasting good money on a Franziskaner for you.” So, we settled for something local; a light and refreshing Mahou. Two cans each. We take our time and I smile when it works. I slur my grunts. I retract my trotters more slowly. My owner seems a lot more patient and smiley too.

“This year she made it extra, extra special. I like it best when it’s just the two of us. Without the surplus grape feeder. I’m going to be 11 this October, and so we tried with beer and wine! We had Pinna Fidelis Ribera del Duero from a lovely vegetable shop in Alaior (cryptically named ¨Frutas y Verduras¨), and a huge tin of Amigo dog meat chunks in beef sauce (3.50 Euros).

“We took our time, she fed me chunks of goo on a fork, and then I washed it down with a slurp of that smooth red stuff. She had a glug every so often too. Munch, more, please! Oink, snip, slurp, burp, oink, snip, slurp, slurp… done! Then we have a lovely nap!” Over to Rachael….

That’s how we’ve been doing it for the last two years. Stress-free. And before anyone says that Dot’s an illegal exotic pet and that I’m not allowed to have her, she has a microchip, a piggy passport, and an escapee fine on the mantelpiece.