[Gpdd] BEHAVIOR: Galloping Piggies!

[Bradley, Stephen G]

I wanted to write a little more about our dear Mr. Clover, and I thought I might
put in a plug for galloping pigsters...

When Clover and Butterscotch got floor time together (which was not as often as
they should have), we would clear basically our whole dining room floor for
them, about 12' by 12', and lay down towels and cloths, weighted down with
things, so that they could get good traction without slipping and sliding.

Now they like that very much, and if you put houses and tunnels and stuff around
the room, they will scramble and trot from place to place, wheeking madly and
chasing each other,  and from time to time, they'll popcorn a bit.  But if you
set things up so that they really have good long stretches of open floor to run
in, every once in a while, they'll... gallop.  I don't know what else to call
it.  If you think of the normal piggy motion as basically having the body
staying at the same height, and the feet moving not in any particular rythm,
that would be what I would call a trot.  The gallop is more like if you imagine
a pig having its back end popcorn many times in succession, and meanwhile
they're moving the front end in the right way to keep up with it; it looks a lot
like a rabbit bolting across the lawn.  Both front feet move together, and the
back feet move together.

They will only keep it up for a few seconds at a time, which is plenty to cover
5 or 6 feet, but... I suspect most of you will know what I'm talking about if I
say that you get a flash or a pang of joy in your heart when a pig popcorns -
imagine being in that same state of wonderful amazement for several whole
seconds while you hold your breath and watch you pig do this AMAZING thing!

We were at a pignic this spring, and the enclosures people had set up were
pretty big, but maybe 6' by 4'... not really quite big enough... and I tried to
encourage people to put more fencing sections up so that we could really give
the pigs room to run, so that maybe they would gallop a bit, but I got the
impression people didn't know what I was talking about.  Do other people's pigs
gallop?  They must, if you give them enough room.  I strongly encourage you to
at least every once in a while find a REALLY big place where your pig or pigs
can run; if you can get them galloping, it will do your heart good.

Steve Bradley, with
Ginger (mommy slave), and
Butterscotch (lonely boar),
all missing Mr. Clover