When you think of having an animal as a pet, what comes to mind? A cat? A dog? How about a pig? That's right, a pig!
While pigs are sometimes portrayed as gluttonous, dirty, or even dangerous or scary in fiction and media and are often viewed as little more than food and livestock, sometimes people will keep these porkers as pets.
Like dogs and cats, pigs have been domesticated by humans for centuries. Though most pigs are fated for the slaughter, a select few are lucky enough to be part of the family as a housepet. Piglets can be trained at an early age to not only be well-behaved, but also loyal and loving pets. In some cases, they may also be Brainy Pigs.
In Real Life, pigs are uncommon household pets for myriad reasons. While piglets are cute little critters, adult pigs range in size from "medium dog" to "half a ton of raw porcine power" (so-called "teacup pigs" are actually piglets, not miniature adult pigs). If bored, they're fully capable of tearing apart furniture. Beyond that, proper veterinary care and a balanced, nutritious diet are more difficult to obtain for pigs than would be the case for a typical housepet such as a cat or a dog. If owners want to have a pig as a pet, they need to have big responsibilities — and big wallets — to raise them.
Compare All Animals Are Dogs, which housepet pigs are liable to be portrayed as. Related to Unusual Pets for Unusual People. No Real Life Examples, please.
Examples:
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Advertising
- A television commercial for Chase banking features an aged couple walking their pet pig in public and attracting a lot of stares.
A narrator reasons that people who live life their own way deserve a bank with financial planning that lets them retire their own way.
Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- Angele Et Rene has this as its entire premise: An nuclear family of two parents and a little girl, with her pet pig.
- Rasher the pig in Dennis the Menace (UK) started off as a farm pig that Dennis had befriended, then started being portrayed as Dennis's pet (yet, somehow, the presence of a pig in the household was ignored whenever a story didn't call for it), before most recently becoming Dennis's Gran's pet.
- Monica's Gang: Smudge, a boy who never took a bath in his life, has a housepet pig called Chauvy, who ironically grew to love baths, cleaning and tidiness.
Fan Works
- With Pearl and Ruby Glowing: Junichinote became blind during an uprising in the Human Trafficking warehouse he worked in and he's afraid of dogs due to being punished with them by other guards, so Hansel gets him a pig as a seeing-eye animal instead.
Film — Animation
- Dug in Early Man has a pet wild boar named Hognob.
- Pua from Moana is Moana's pet piglet who acts more like a dog than a pig.
- Oink (2022) is centered around a pig given to Babs by her grandpa and her trying to convince her parents to keep it as a pet. Given how messy the titular Oink can be, training the pig to get it under control proves to be a challenge, though Oink is eventually accepted as the family pet at the end of the film.
- The Simpsons Movie: Homer impulsively adopts a pig that was being used for a Krusty Burger commercial, naming him first Spider-Pig, then Harry Plopper. His disposing of the pig's poop in Springfield Lake is what sets the main plot in motion.
Film — Live-Action
- In American Psycho, Evelyn shows off an adorable pot-bellied pig named "Snowball" (a likely reference to Animal Farm) at her Christmas party and comments that they make great household pets. Evelyn shows nothing but adoring affection for the pig, but her boyfriend, Patrick Bateman, is not particularly charmed by it and scowls in disgust.
- Babe: the titular pig is won at a carnival by Farmer Hoggett, who is against the idea at first, but is convinced by the carnival workers to be his Christmas dinner. Hoggett grows fond of Babe and serves roast duck for Christmas dinner instead. Over the course of the movie, Babe makes friends with the other animals who live on Hoggett Farm, and becomes a Sheep Pig when he saves part of Hoggett's flock from a pair of thieves. Hoggett even enters him in the Sheepdog competition, much to the bewilderment of the judges.
- Black Widow (2021): Natasha and Yelena's adopted mother Melina Vostokoff owns a pet pig named Alexei (after her husband Alexei Shostakov, due to the apparent resemblance they share), who she has used in experiments in the past. In the film, she is able to control the pig into coming into the house and even temporarily stopping his breathing.
- The Highwaymen: One of the two heroes, Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, keeps a boar called "Porky" in his house, much to his wife's displeasure. Porky basically behaves like an Angry Guard Dog for his master, though he respects him enough not to attack anyone Hamer tells him not to.
- Played for Laughs in The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear, where Jane keeps two piglets and a full-grown pot-bellied pig in her apartment (alongside several other animals). A would-be assassin trips over the pot-bellied pig as he tries to escape.
- Pig concerns one which gets abducted, forcing its owner (played by Nicolas Cage) to go through great lengths to find it.
- Rudy The Racing Pig and its sequel Rudy: The Return of the Racing Pig stars Rudy, an adorable pig, (especially when he squeaks). In the first film, Rudy was won by an urban family in a raffle, and in the second, is picked up by a lonely boy named Nickles for a pet.
Literature
- The Belgariad: Played for Laughs with a very folksy Nadrak woodsman who not only lives with his pet pig but brings it to the tavern with him. The protagonist makes a Running Gag of the encounter, but has to admit that it's a good pig.
- Charlotte's Web: Fern is a young girl who saves Wilbur, a pig whose mother couldn't feed him due to having more piglets than nipples, and raises him as her pet. When he grows up, he moves to her uncle and aunt's house, and while they initially want to kill him for food, he eventually becomes their pet.
- The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash: Jimmy's boa is left behind at the farm, but Jimmy isn't that upset because one of the pigs decided to come home with him.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In "The Long Haul," the Heffleys win a piglet at a county fair and keep him as a pet for the next few books before he runs away in "The Meltdown" and is never seen again.
- In one Encyclopedia Brown mystery, Encyclopedia has to solve the mystery of two pet pigs being kidnapped right before a contest in which they were entered.
- In George's Secret Key to the Universe, George has a pet pig named Freddy.
- Lady Lollipop is a book about a Spoiled Brat princess named Penelope who learns manners after gaining a Brainy Pig named Lollipop as a birthday present.
- Let It Snow: One of the plot points of "The Patron Saint of Pigs" is about Tegan wanting a teacup pig (a pet piglet that comes in a cup) for Christmas and Addie trying to get the present for her. Addie pardonably doesn't think a pig would make a good pet because of the size it would reach after it grows up.
- The Mercy Watson series revolves around a happy couple with a pet pig named Mercy. They dote on her, feeding her masses of buttered toast and singing her to sleep every night. Their neighbor, Eugenia, detests Mercy, insisting that pigs don't belong in suburban neighborhoods.
- In Stephen King's Misery, Annie Wilkes has a pet pig. Being that she is such a huge fan of Paul Sheldon's In-Universe Misery novels, it comes as no surprise that she named the pig "Misery."
Annie: I wasn't trying to be funny in a mean way when I named my pig Misery, no sir. Please don't think that. No, I named her in the spirit of fan love, which is the purest love there is. You should be flattered.
- Mrs Pepper Pot: In one story, Mrs. Pepper-Pot adopts a pig, whom she names Squiggly because his lame leg makes him unable to walk in a straight line.
Live-Action Television
- Green Acres: Fred & Doris Ziffel have a pet pig named Arnold, who is more like an adopted child. Among other things, he watches TV, plays checkers, visits the townsfolk, and even attends school.
Tabletop Games
- Dead of Winter: One random event has a dying man bequeath your character his beloved companion pig. It helps you hunt for food if you keep it; otherwise, it contributes more directly to the food supply.
Video Games
- Divinity: Original Sin II: One wealthy merchant in Arx keeps an extremely pampered pet pig in his manor house. The pig also happens to be his sole heir rather than his daughter, as you learn if you join in an Inheritance Murder.
- Dragon Age features small animals called nugs as the fantasy equivalent of pigs. Nugs are native to the underground Deep Roads of the dwarves and have been domesticated by the latter as a source of cheap meat. Nevertheless, in Dragon Age: Origins, one of your companions, Leliana, finds them so adorable that she wants to keep one as a pet. You can eventually obtain a particularly cute nug and give it to her a gift, whom she names Shmooples. Afterwards, Shmooples can be found around her tent at party camp, apparently unperturbed by having to live on the surface.
- Illusion of Gaia: Princess Kara has a pet piglet she calls Hamlet, who seems to have a preternatural intelligence. Early on he helps the protagonist Will escape the dungeons of Edward Castle, and much later on in the game, he sacrifices himself to feed a starving village so that they don't eat the party.
- At the begining of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker you can catch wild piglets for one of the families in the island to keep as pets. When you return to Outset you find out that one of the pigs has grown enormous and they named him after you... the other two are nowhere to be seen, but it's heavily implied they ate them.
- Harvest Moon: Magical Melody is the first game in the Story of Seasons series to include pigs. But rather than being butchered for meat, they're a pet like your dog and can be used to sniff out truffles to collect.
- Mega Man Legends: After Megaman rescues Shu from the Birdbots' base on Calbania Island in the second game, she gifts him an adorable piglet. He, in turn, can gift it to a Farmer on Nino Island — at first, she plans on turning the piglet into her next meal, but a revisit to her room reveals she didn't have the heart to go through with it, keeping the piglet as a pet.
- Minecraft: Story Mode: Jesse has a pet pig named Reuben, who noticeably much different looking from any other pigs seen and is much more expressive. Sadly, Reuben dies while helping Jesse destroy The Wither Storm, with his death greatly affecting Jesse.
- RuneScape has a companion pet pig as a reward from a relatively novice-level quest wherein it was raised, which can either be deployed from a player's inventory as a follower, or placed in the menagerie of a player-owned house in game to wander said (virtual) house. This pet pig can be customized to be carrying a backpack, armour, or a miniature prayer altar to showcase the capabilities of the summonable spirit pigs which were also released with the same quest. Strangely, though, pigs are not a raiseable animal in the game's player-owned farm, unlike chickens, rabbits, sheep, cows and yaks.
Web Animation
- Hazbin Hotel: Angel Dust has an adorable pig-like demon named Fat Nuggets as a pet. He's literally Angel's Morality Pet.
Western Animation
- In Detention, Shareena has one (aptly named Pig).
- Gravity Falls: Mabel's pet pig Waddles is a housepet, to the point where she makes Stan promise not to put Waddles outside while she's away because she fears for Waddles' safety. Her fears are proven right, as within minutes of being put outside, he is carried off by a pterodactyl.
- Hey Arnold!: Arnold Shortman has a pet pig named Abner who acts more like a dog than a pig. He was actually a gift from the Green Eyes to the Shortmans.
- HouseBroken: One of the pets in Honey's therapy group is Max, a Berkshire pig belonging to George Clooney, who acts like a spoiled celebrity.
- The Loud House: While some of Liam's pigs are kept in the pen, he has one named Virginia whom he keeps as a pet and wrestles with.
- Nexo Knights: In the season 1 finale, Lance Richmond adopts a pig he names Hamletta after spending a good chunk of the episode chained up in the same pen as her. She shows up a number of times in following seasons, and it seems Lance treats her well, which says much about the guy.
- Puppy Dog Pals: Grace (introduced in Season 5) has a piglet named Nougat for a pet.
- South Park: Cartman had a pet pig named Fluffy starting in Season 1 that disappeared without mention after Season 4.
