Support pig? Officials sow doubt
Standoff over animal could spur court case
CANAJOHARIE, N.Y. — Ellie the potbellied pig snuggles up to Wyverne Flatt when he watches TV and sometimes rolls over to let him pet her belly. The 110-pound pig is “family,” Flatt says, an emotional support animal who helped him through a divorce and the death of his mother.
Officials in his upstate village of Canajoharie see it very differently. To them, the pig is a farm animal that Flatt is harboring in the village illegally.
The case could soon be headed to a criminal trial. But it has already caught the attention of pig partisans who believe the animals should be respected more as companions instead of just a food source.
“I could never dream of giving away somebody who’s part of my family,” Flatt said recently as he patted the pig in his kitchen. “She’s very smart. She’s more intelligent than my dogs. I think she can kind of home in on you when you’re feeling bad because she’ll want to come in and snuggle with you.”
Ellie is a knee-high Vietnamese potbellied pig with a black coat and hooves that clack on the floor as she walks from her kitchen food dish.
Flatt was living in South Carolina when he got the pig in 2018, when she was “about as big as a shoe.”
She came north with Flatt in 2019 when he moved to Canajoharie, a modest village on the Mohawk River dominated by the husk of the old Beech-nut food plant.
Flatt, 54, bought a fixer-upper near the business center of the village with plans to remodel it and maybe open a restaurant on part of the ground floor. He also has two dogs and two cats.
A village code officer told Flatt that he was housing Ellie illegally in October 2019 during a visit for a building permit request. When the village noticed Ellie was still there six months later, Flatt was notified he was violating the local code barring farm animals in the village. Violation of a zoning code is a misdemeanor under state law, according to court filings.
Flatt says the village is picking on his pig, which he says is clean and smart. Several of his neighbors have signed affidavits saying they like Ellie.
Village Mayor Jeff Baker said the board has no comment while the court case is pending.