The happiest pig on earth
Alesja Daehnrich, co-director of the Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary dotes on her big baby, Dozer, rescued from a bacyard butcher.
It is safe to say that a pig named Dozer may be the happiest pig on earth.
With an angel on his shoulder, Dozer escaped a brutal slaughter and ended up at Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary in Rougemont, N.C. where he is living his best life and serving as a symbol of hope and resilience.
In early 2021, Alesja Daehnrich, co-owner of Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary, received a plea from Orange County (North Carolina) Animal Services asking if she could bid on a farm pig whose public auction was just days away. North Carolina state law mandates that animal shelters and sheriff’s departments auction off all stray livestock.
“We agreed to help rescue the young pig and learned from the animal services staff that he was a very sweet guy,” Alesja says.
On the day of the auction, she sent two volunteers to the shelter to bid on him. All auctions are cash only, and the volunteers made sure they had enough money to win the bid, no matter how much it cost.
When the volunteers arrived, they saw a six-month-old pig whose story might have been very different if he had not landed at an animal shelter that was open to sanctuary placement.
The pig and his littermate had been purchased by people who intended to slaughter them in their back yard, but on the day of the slaughter, one of them managed to escape, Alesja says.
For days he roamed around the local community and rooted in neighborhood yards.
Residents called Orange County Animal Services.
Officers picked him up and took him to the shelter where they placed him on a mandatory stray hold and waited for someone to claim him. They contacted the owners, who were not interested in cooperating, Alesja says.
“They basically told the officers to bring the pig back to them because they didn’t want to bother driving to the shelter to pick him up,” Alesja says. “They also refused to pay the reclaim fees or sign the surrender form and stopped answering their phone.”
The pig stayed at the shelter during his stray hold and went through the auction process. The Blind Spot volunteers placed the winning bid and put him in a large animal carrier to transport him to his new home.
Baby Dozer lounges at Orange County Animal Services in 2021.
Alesja and her husband, Alex run a 41-acre, non-profit animal sanctuary in Rougemont, North Carolina, located near the center of the state and about 25 miles south of the Virginia state line.
It is a peaceful haven and home to 150 friendly pigs, goats, sheep, horses, alpacas and various fowl, including a flock of spoiled ducks, a pair of overly affectionate geese, a family of majestic peacocks and four dramatic emus.
Alex named the place Blind Spot Animal Sanctuary, symbolizing animals who have been neglected and unseen, residing in the blind spot of society.
Most farm pigs don’t live past six months, especially those born and raised on industrial factory farms.
Piglets are born in crowded concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), large windowless barns, where they are confined to farrowing crates for nursing until they are weaned at a young age and ripped away from their mothers and siblings.
Their next stop is a finishing farm where they are raised for five or six months until it is time for them to be transferred to a processing plant and slaughtered for food.
While this was not Dozer’s path, it is generally the life most pigs face when they are born into the North Carolina hog industry. And the truth is, pigs are often treated poorly, even when they are raised on small farms or used by individuals for breeding.
“This pig was just a baby,” Alesja says. “He had experienced a lot of tragedy. He had lost his family, and was looking for reassurance, compassion and a place to feel safe.”
During his freedom ride to his new life at the sanctuary, the pig managed to open the door of his carrier and gazed out the car window, watching the world go by as he left his old life behind.
Naming the pig was easy, Alesja says. He was a large piglet, and his act of bulldozing his way out of danger from his former owners and rooting up neighborhood yards inspired the sanctuary volunteers to call him Dozer the Bulldozer.
It did not take long before his sweet nature and goofy personality began to shine in his new home.
“Dozer turned out to be the sweetest, kindest, and most gentle pig we have ever met,” Alesja says. “He is so easy-going, absolutely loves life, and melts in the arms of our volunteers who have fallen madly in love with him.”
Alesja was concerned about Dozer’s sibling – the other pig who was still at the farm where Dozer had escaped. She and Alex decided to save him too, and set about trying to locate the original owners.
“We were full of hope that we would witness a reunion and a happy ever after for both pigs,” Alesja says.
On a beautiful Saturday morning, Alex set out on his journey to get the pig, while Alesja and the sanctuary volunteers held their breath.
“We knew that knocking on a stranger’s door and asking for a pig was a dangerous move, and we worried he might have been met with anger or even shot,” Alesja says.
At the family’s house, Alex introduced himself and explained the Blind Sport Animal Sanctuary’s mission. He told them the sanctuary was housing the pig who had escaped from that home and asked if the other pig was still there.
“The farmer looked straight into Alex’s eyes, told him he still had the other pig, and pointed to a freezer, saying ‘it’s in there’” Alesja remembers, choking back tears. “Horrified, shocked, and upset, Alex quickly left that place.”
The word spread throughout the sanctuary that Dozer’s sibling had been killed.
“We cried alongside the volunteers about this senseless and brutal slaughter, and we made a promise to Dozer that he would live his best life at the Blind Spot,” Alesja says. “We promised he would live his life to the fullest, and that he would live for his sibling and other pigs who had been slaughtered.”
Four years have passed, and Dozer has been doing just that. He is the silliest and naughtiest pig at the sanctuary and keeps everyone laughing. He goes wherever he wants to go and does whatever he wants to do.
“We’re constantly hearing people say ‘Dozer, Dozer don’t do that,’ or ‘Dozer broke a fence again,’ and ‘what has he gotten into now?’” Alesja says, laughing.
To say he is larger than life is putting it mildly. He was a big piglet when he arrived at Blind Spot, and continues to grow. He has formed a family with several potbellied pigs and has finally realized that he is much bigger than they are, Alesja says.
Those potbellied pigs, who once bossed Dozer around, have relinquished their alpha pig status to him, and he now leads the herd.
Dozer, unaware of his large size, decides to take a dip in a little pool on a scorching day. He crushes it to the ground, but it works for him.
Dozer craves attention, lives for a good belly rub, and loves eating snacks. He can sniff out an apple or a cookie from across the barn and doesn’t bother waiting for someone to offer him a tasty treat, preferring instead to help himself.
Once, a visitor came to BSAS for a tour and left food in her car and the door open. Dozer crawled inside to root it out. A news crew came out to produce a television segment about the sanctuary, and left a fast-food restaurant bag in their car. He found a way to break in and check out the bag hoping there were a few scraps inside.
Alesja laughs when she remembers a reporter approaching her and saying, “Ma’am, there’s a pig in my car.”[
Dozer became an ambassador for kindness as one of five pigs whose images were placed on billboards along Interstate 40 in the heart of the largest concentration of factory-farmed pigs in the United States. Alesja points to this form of advocacy as a step in the right direction toward a more compassionate world.
“If only society saw what we see in Dozer -- a highly intelligent, sweet, and social animal,” Alesja says. “The world would certainly be a better place.”
Dozer was a picture perfect model for a popular billboard on Interstate 40 in Duplin County, where millions of pigs just like him are raised for slaughter.