Mango on the mend thanks to human friends
A kind-hearted woman has saved a piglet named Mango from a lonely death at the edge of Highway 417 east of Ottawa.
Now donors are flooding a GoFundMe campaign with donations for the little pig’s veterinary bills, and Mango is recovering nicely.
But the rescue nearly didn’t happen. Dr. Lara Elizabeth Cohen, of the Aylmer Veterinary Clinic in Gatineau, explained on a GoFundMe page how a woman named Julia drove past the injured pig last Monday and almost didn’t notice him.
“She caught a glimpse of what she thought was a paper bag on the highway. She passed it quickly but could not get the image out of her mind,” Cohen wrote.
“About five minutes out, she realized that what she had thought was a paper bag, was actually a baby pig lying on the side of the highway. He was clearly injured. She quickly turned around and 10 minutes later, arrived to find a small piglet lying shivering and bloody on the ground.”
The little guy is eight or nine weeks old, weighs 20 pounds, and probably fell off a transport truck.
“Not knowing what to do, Julia grabbed a towel, wrapped him up and brought him home.”
Mango was clearly hurt, so Julia started to make phone calls and eventually connected with Cohen and another vet.
Mango “was not looking good.” On the car ride to the emergency clinic, the second vet thought she would be doing a humane euthanasia, Cohen wrote.
“Shortly before her arrival however, her eyes met his and he had a look of gratitude and hope that could not be ignored. It was then that she decided to take a chance.
“She was able to obtain pain medications from the emergency clinic and Mango started to show improvement almost immediately. Despite this, he remained largely listless and was unable to walk. One of his legs was extremely swollen and dangled from his hip. We tried to keep him as immobilized as we could while creating a sling for him to walk outside to do his business every few hours.”
Mango had surgery for broken bones in his upper and lower hind leg and is recovering well.
Julia, the woman who found him, named him Hamlet at first. The vets vetoed this (too meatlike) and renamed him after he fell asleep with a piece of mango dangling out of his mouth.
“He’s doing phenomenally well,” Cohen said Monday. “He sleeps a lot, which is part of recovery for sure, but it’s also part of being a baby.
“He seems quite comfortable. We have been able to discontinue the harder pain medications and he is good on an anti-inflammatory.”
He can’t put weight on the injured leg yet, but being a baby is on his side because his body is primed to build new bones and cells quickly.
“He is on rest for four to six weeks in a small cage and then we are going to open up the area he is allowed to walk about in,” she said.
“He is very playful. He loves his belly scratched. He loves to interact with people. The funny thing that we learned is that, like a dog, he wags his tail when he’s happy. It is the cutest thing ever.
“When you feed him a meal that he is excited about he will wag his tail. So he’s very much like a dog.”
He is also house-trained, using a litter box.
The clinic has found a foster home for the short term, but will need someone to take him in the long term.
“This will be a place where he can roam freely, burrow in the soil and be amongst other farm and domestic animals, enjoying the care and respect of humans who understand the value of all creatures — large and small — regardless of what this earth has deemed to be their destiny,” Cohen wrote.
She cautions that Mango will some day be very large. He is not a miniature pig.
By 7 p.m. Monday, the campaign had raised $5,560 of the estimated $7,000 needed for surgery and followup care. tspears@postmedia.com