Extreme K9s 101!

Today's Extreme K9 is Tink the Dachshund!

"One bone-chilling night, on a bed of straw, a very lucky pig was born.

Pink was runt by all measures. When he was born, neither Johanna Kerby, who helped the sow deliver the litter that night, or her husband at daughter, who were watching, thought the tiny piglet would survive outside his mother's womb. Luckily, Pink was given a chance at life by an unlikely benefactor.

Of a litter of eleven, Pink was the last to emerge, and it was immediately clear he wasn't like his brothers and sisters. Pigs are normally born with their eyes open, and it takes just a minute they are walking a nursing. They're also about three to four pounds. Pink was less than a pound, with his eyes sealed shut against the world. He was frail, virtually hairless, his tiny voice barely a squeak. "He just lay in the box and quacked," Johanna recalls. "He didn't even try to walk. He was just too weak." When she held the baby to his mother's teat to nurse, he wouldn't suck. And soon enough, his stronger sibling were pushing him around, trying to get Pink out of the bed, to rid themselves of their weakest competitor.

Johanna had an idea. The family dog, a small red dachshund named Tink, had always been loving to people and maternal to other animals. And she had a thing for pigs.

The first time Tink was introduced to piglets, years before in the Kerbys' hog barn, "she rounded them all up into a corner and started licking them," Johanna recalls. "They were twenty-five pounds, much bigger than she was, but Tink didn't care. She was so happy and wiggly--- she had a great big grin on her face." Another time she nearly drowned in the soupy, thick mud of the hog pen when she ventured in, just to get near the animals.

Tink had given birth to two pups herself recently, but one had been stillborn, and she was clearly distressed by the loss. Johanna decided to put Tink and Pink together to see if the pup would accept the pig as just another offspring. The same trick had worked recently with another dog's puppies; Tink had happily tucked them in among her own.

Piglet fostering went as smoothly as the puppy placement had. Once Pink was let into the dog's crate, "Tink went crazy. She licked him thoroughly and even chewed off the rest of his umbilical cord," said Johanna. Then she tucked him under her chin to keep him warm. And when the other puppies were ready to nurse, she used her nose to encourage Pink to join them.

To the Kerbys' relief, Pink began to feed. "Tink treated him like royalty; I think he was actually her favorite," Johanna says. With such special care, Pink soon caught up in size and weight to his siblings, though he was never interested in rejoining the pigs. His family was now strictly canine, and he's romp and wrestle with the puppies as if nothing were amiss."

Article from: Unlikely Friendships book by Jennifer S. Holland, p.29

Pic from: http://www.moderndogmagazine.com/articles/tink-pink/10717