Via estherthewonderpig IGIt all started when Steve Jenkins and Derek Walter decided to adopt a micro piglet from an old friend. They had heard the piglet wouldn’t grow past 70 pounds and would be like having a third dog around the house, seeing they already had two dogs living with them.And while Esther has been like owning a dog for the pair, being fully potty trained and actually smarter than their dogs, the “70 pounds” part wasn’t as accurate.
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Via estherthewonderpig IGObviously, Esther is not a micro-pig. Early on, a vet realized that Esther was actually a commercial pig, and would probably get to 250 pounds.Which was also wrong.
Esther ended up being 650 pounds, and while her new owners dearly loved having her around the house, she was simply too massive for their three-bedroom home in Ontario, Canada.
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Via estherthewonderpig IGLuckily for Steve Jenkins and Derek Walter, they had done something that they had no idea would help save Esther not once, but twice. They had created a Facebook page for her, and she had thousands of followers.So when Jenkins and Walter realized they needed a full-blown farm space to be able to keep Esther, money was a massive issue. They had found a 50-acre farm only 40 minutes from their current home, but it was listed at a daunting $1 million price tag.
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Via estherthewonderpig IGThey turned to Esther’s Facebook fans to crowdfund $400,000 to buy the farm. And the fans ended up delivering $440,000, contributed by over 9,000 people across 44 different countries.With the money, the farm was purchased and officially named the Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary, and she wasn’t the only tenant. It ended up becoming a place for other misfit animals, including a cow, horses, goats, and (unsurprisingly) another pig.
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Via estherthewonderpig IGNormally, that would be the end of a Humanity story like this, but Esther’s story does not end there. That all happened by 2014, and by the time 2018 rolled around, her fans would have to help save her one more time.
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Via estherthewonderpig IGShe unfortunately fell ill in 2018, and the couple took Esther to the Ontario Veterinary College to get her a CT scan.Except that she was much too large for the CT scan machine they had.
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Via estherthewonderpig IGI’ll let this quote from The Star do the talking for this next bit:Jenkins said he and Walter were surprised by the lack of equipment necessary to help larger animals in the country.
“We just assumed that they had that sort of equipment and that any university would have that sort of equipment, and so it was a huge shock to find out they didn’t,” he said.
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Via estherthewonderpig IGThis was a dire situation. Without a CT scan, it would have been impossible to diagnose Esther properly. And in order to do that, they needed to build a brand new CT scanner big enough to fit Esther and other large animals. And they needed $650,000 to do it.
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Via estherthewonderpig IGNever underestimate Esther’s fans. They ended up blowing past the $650,000 goal, raising an additional $120,000 for the machine. After it was built, the scan was performed. The bad news was that Esther had breast cancer.But the good news was they’d found it early enough to operate on Esther, and she’s now cancer free.
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Via estherthewonderpig IGNow, if you’ve thought to yourself while reading this gallery that this might make a pretty solid book, Jenkins and Walter have you covered. Their book, Esther the Wonder Pig, was a New York Times bestseller, and with that comes the inevitable movie deal.The Donners, a Hollywood production company that spearheaded the X-Men films and Free Willy, are working on it now. Maybe we’ll see that movie, maybe not, but just enjoy the rest of these pictures of Esther having a hell of a time.
