The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood

by Sy Montgomery

Gretchen does not feel that homestead farming is wrong; many animals live good lives on family farms. The cruelty happens on giant, crowded “factory farms,” where living animals are treated like industrial products, and where 80 percent of America’s sixty million pigs are raised for slaughter each year. “Of course, Christopher’s story doesn’t cancel out all the horrors pigs have suffered all over the world for so many centuries,” Gretchen admitted. “But you and Chris created a different reality: of honoring a pig’s life for the length of his natural life.” It was a reality that gave hope and peace in more ways than I could then imagine. For I had not yet spoken to my pastor, Graham, after Christopher’s death. Actually, Graham wasn’t my pastor anymore. Much had happened since the early days at fellowship, when Graham would introduce me to new members by announcing I lived with a pig. The month after my father had died, Graham’s wife, my friend Maggie, had been diagnosed with lung cancer. She died the following April. Since then, Graham had left our church, having been called to a new congregation. He is now happily remarried to a beautiful and accomplished art professor with three wonderful, now-grown children—all of whom, when they were smaller, came to know and love Christopher, bringing him slops and marveling at his size and gentleness and the spectacle of his greedy joy. But Maggie’s relationship with Chris had had a special intensity. It was not until thirteen years a...