The Curse of the Pigglesworth

I despise Walmart. I hate their business model, which drives vendors to near bankruptcy and kills locally-owned small business. I hate their gigantic stores which swallow up acres of once open land that. I hate the way their treat their employees, most of whom are part-time so they won’t have benefits and are depend upon food stamps for survival. I hate the politics of the Walton family, who support the GOP with fistfuls of money.

I mostly hate Walmart because it has made me a hypocrite.

Because of my aforementioned revulsion, until recently I had never set foot in a Walmart. Or a Sam’s Club. I was  smugly proud of this.

But then I discovered Pigglesworths.

For those of you who do not have Great Danes, I will let you in on a secret: these are must-have Great Dane toys.

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Pigglesworths seem simple. They are rubber toys in the shape of pigs that make a disgusting grunt instead of a more plebeian squeak. The pigs come in bright colors including lime green, orange, purple and pink and have contrasting spots.

 It shouldn’t be a big deal. Pigglesworths are just dog toys after all.

Not exactly.

I kept hearing about these pigs on every Great Dane page.  Danes apparently adore these toys. Not like, but adored. Every Dane worth his slobber has at least one. Or 40.

Did I mention, they are cheap?  That means when the noses are chomped off, the stuffing extracted and grunter ripped out, you can get another without breaking the bank.

Dane Facebook pages are filled with dogs posing with piles of nose-less, silent piggies.  The lack of stuffing and noise doesn’t seem to dim  the dogs’ enthusiasm at all.

Pigglesworths could just be the perfect dog toy.

My dogs are just a wee bit spoiled. They literally have toy boxes filled with dead stuffies and other toys. Hedgehog? Check. Rope toys? Check. Flamingos? Check. 

(They have no Teddy Bears . For some reason, most of my Teddys arrived wearing clothing.  Murray the Dane, being a practical dog, found this simply wrong. Bears, unless their first name is Yogi, shouldn’t have clothing. Which meant that he constantly undressed the Teddy Bears. I found this disturbing, and removed them. Murray has been gone for years but I’ve never replaced the Teddys. )

But I had no Pigglesworths. Zero. Obviously I needed to rectify this problem.

So off I went in search of the mysterious, nay, legendary grunting pigs. 

I admit, I was naive. First I went to independent pet stores. No hogs. I went to Petco and Petsmart. Nary a porcine to be found. 

Every time I passed a pet store, I went inside. Pigglesworths had become my quest. My Holy Grail was a rubber florescent colored swine. And there was only one place they could be dependably found in the United States.*

Which is how I found myself in the parking lot of the local Walmart. I sat in the car for almost a half an hour, trying to figure out what the offset for shopping there would be. Do I go to a local pet shop and buy a ton of overpriced chew toys to make up for my Walmart sins? Maybe a donation to a local animal shelter would absolve me.

Finally, I took a deep breath and went into the store. It was every bit as awful as I imagined.

I dislike shopping but I truly hate shopping in big box stores; they overwhelm me. Usually I get dizzy and walk out empty handed. But even Costco (which treats its employees AND vendors well) had not prepared me for this.

My head started to spin. The store was immense and was filled with goods I had never thought of, and probably no one needs.  Items were piled to the rafters and wrapped in shiny plastic.

I had the urge to bolt, but because of my rotten, spoiled, dogs, I pushed on. Somewhere in this godforsaken place there were Pigglesworths. I would find them and purchase them if it was the last thing I did.

For a moment it seemed like it might. I immediately got lost in the children’s clothing and baby supplies. Next I came upon the medical department, which went on forever. By the time I found the pet aisle, I was lightheaded.

There, near the floor, in a dusty bin, were Pigglesworths. Once I spotted them, they practically glowed. I grabbed two of every color, in the hopes that the pig supply would outlive the dogs. As everyone likes to remind me, Great Danes don’t live long, so there was a chance.

My arms full of pigs, I ran to the checkout. There were hundreds of people in line. Many had dozens of children and overflowing carts filled with life’s necessities.  A few stared at me and my arms filled with colorful pigs.

Yes, they were judging me. I didn't care. I had my loot.

Eventually I made it outside. I took a deep breath. The air smelled a little off, but that could have been because the Walmart was in Porter Ranch, during the gigantic Aliso Canyon natural gas leak. Or that just could have been the smell of Walmart.

 I didn’t care, I was just glad to be outside. With the pigs.

When I got home, I was surrounded by Danes.  Excitedly I took out a Pigglesworth for each dog and presented them with a flourish.

Nothing. Nada. They barely blinked.

Dalai finally politely nosed one and walked away, bored. Poppy the Brittany was interested and poked it. When it grunted she leapt back in terror and took off.

Finally, Jasper crept up on a green piggie from behind. He grabbed it by the head and took off grunting it while running circles of joy. 

Success! He LOVED his Pigglesworth.

It was always nearby. He even took it to bed, so if either of us rolled over in the middle of the night, we were startled awake by grunts.

Unfortunately, I discovered that since they are cheap rubber, Pigglesworths do not, in fact, last forever. In less time than you can imagine, the noses were gnawed off, and the stuffing yanked out, leaving dozens of husks of colorful rubber.  I’ve taken to impaling them on fence posts, like heads of pagans in the Middle Ages.

Lately Jasper has been standing in front of the fence, sadly whining. Which means one thing.

So help me, I need to go back to Walmart.

*Pigglesworths are available online. From China. Between the cost and the shipping they average about $15 a pig. If they are in stock. Which they never are. I’ve checked. Honest.