The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood

by Sy Montgomery

There would be much darkness in the months ahead. Often—too often—despite medicine and prayer, despite faith and strength, the ones we love are torn from us, sometimes viciously, for reasons no one can fathom. But sometimes God, or luck, or the universe itself allows you a rare opportunity. That is the gift that the darkness brought: the knowledge that sometimes you really can love someone back to life. PIG VISITORS THAT SUMMER GOT QUITE A DIFFERENT SHOW FROM years previous: as we left the house, out would stumble a fifteen-year-old deaf and mostly blind border collie, holding her head at a forty-five-degree tilt. Sometimes I’d carry Tess part-way to the barnyard, where we’d be greeted by a flock of hens composed partly of menopausal birds so aged that some of them had grown spurs on their feet like a rooster. Then, armed with the most tempting of slops, we would coax the arthritic Chris to limp from his pen. Sometimes he just couldn’t be bothered to step over the threshold, knowing that usually he could just stay in the nice, cool barn—which Howard had recently upgraded by installing a rotating fan—while a crowd of admirers gratefully placed pastries in his open mouth.