I Love Dogs, Pigs Not So Much

I took the dogs for a walk early this morning. Koa the male with the hip problem did alright and wanted to play fetch, but I can tell he is having problems. On the way up the stairs he slips a bit and I have been following behind him to make sure he doesn’t slide down. At the bottom of the steps is concrete.

So I fed them and went to fill their water dish and had no water. That means one of two things. The first, which is fairly remote is that the water company pumping station down the road has an issue. The more likely event is that I have a broken water pipe. As I ran down the steps and headed towards the side of the house to investigate, I am thinking of the points of failure. The water meter is 400 feet down the hill, running between two neighbors properties. It used to be PVC and get broken often, so I replaced it with HDPE which is a heavy duty pipe. Once it gets to the house, it becomes PVC and runs inside and along the side of the house to the outside faucets.

As I rounded the corner I could hear the water and a pig came running past me and into the brush. As I cursed feral pigs in general and this one specifically, I turned the water cutoff to temporarily fix the problem. Unfortunately it will be a few hours without water as I need to go to Ace Hardware for some new PVC and couplers. The old pipes I have here and in too bad a shape to re-use. You should know that I was at Ace yesterday buying some mounting clips to get some of the pipe fastened tightly against the house. I am not sure that I was thinking at the time to relocate as much of it as I could above where it could not get damaged by pigs, but that is my thought now.

There is a local guy who brought his dogs by a few weeks ago, but he has not been able to come back since, but says he will. I’ll have to call him again, or seek other pig hunters. Feral pigs are a massive problem here and it is not unusual to see guys with pig-hunting dogs in their pickups or hear the sound of dogs barking and then a shot.

I have tried to have empathy for the pigs however when they tear up the property, dig up the trees and cost me hundreds of dollars on water bill, they have to go, one way of the other.

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Seconds after posting this I went outside on the porch and there were 5 or 6 pigs on the other side of the property. A day of reckoning is coming soon!