dd jan 5
I get lots of emails saying how much fun people have reading the daily doggy with their morning coffee and I do have a good time being slightly cheerful about most things but I decided to take a slightly different tack this morning with the very worst animal episode job I ever had and all the problems I had in doing it. You may need a pencil and paper in order to envision this particular commercial we shot....
I believe the product was hood milk and the concept was to have four big pigs pull Santa’s sleigh ----- they called and booked the job a week ahead...and I thought well fine I'll figure it out somehow----- and I immediately went up to Mr. Scott up there in Newburyport and asked if I could borrow four of his pigs--- they're pretty good size that didn't have any babies at the time so .... I bought home 4 of his pigs and put them in my horse stalls which were along the side of the barn which is full ---or was full--- of kennels ----- I had them two to a stall. they booked that jobs a week ahead OK that gave me seven days to figure out how to get these pigs in harness so i took the usual ..how to make friends with an animal tactic.....I got a big roll of 1 inch green webbing and with my handy all awl I tacked together something that would go around their necks and their bellies and then go behind like traces on a horse but five days into the whole thing I couldn't even get these things over their heads---- I was getting absolutely nowhere.. a mommy pig is very interested in their baby pigs--- they're very protective etcetera but after baby pigs -----pigs only interest is in food and they had absolutely no concept of doing anything I asked them to do... then I realized if you can't lick them join them ---and the only way I was going to get control of these things was food and I tried frying pans of food that didn't really work and then I thought a spray bottle with something sweet in it like honey diluted... and I immediately had their undivided attention---- I could now cause them to follow me---- and put the harness on.--- it once I discovered the honey problem it didn't take me 5 minutes to get the harness on so then I just had to figure out how to get them to semi walk in the same direction which of course would take two people and two bottles of honey spray.... per pair....
so for four pigs four sets of harness four spray bottles of honey deluded and 6 “handlers”. ... we set off for a filming studio "high output" in Boston.. I had the pigs in my long 6 horse trailer.. I parked in the parking lot as did other cars carrying all the help that was with me and I went into the studio to see exactly what was going on
I was mortified to find out that not only did we have to get them in front of the sleigh they had ,... but the sleigh was up on an 18 inch platform.. I don't know how many of you people know anything about pigs but they don't do stairs willingly.. the director of this shot had figured we'd just ask them to get up on the platform---- not easy with a 500 LB pig---- any rate I finally got them up and in front of the sleigh but to get them to stand parallel and all I ran a rope up through the left side of the right pig to the right side of the left pig and then back behind the sleigh which means that when the pigs pulled forward they pulled each other together... that did work very nicely and we had two of these pairs to put together with the various ropes going backwards behind the sleigh where I had a man from Essex Aggie who was--- shall I say portly--- and he was in charge of hanging on to the ropes and pulling on them to force the pigs together..
well for those of you who are paying attention--- if there's a sleigh on this platform and we go past it with the two pairs of pigs that would be 4 ropes backwards which had to go behind the sleigh so that the pigs could be pulled into place when they tried to walk forward.. well that meant that the sleigh had to be tipped on one runner in order to get those ropes back there to the portly manned who was supposed to be pulling on them..
we finally got the pigs in place and they stood perfectly still slobbering this diluted honey which really was quite sticky... that added the other complication the Santa sleigh with the pigs was supposed to be working in a snowstorm.. and that snow storm was shredded plastic ---- I was working one of the spray bottles for the lead pigs and the other lead pig was being squirted on by my son-in-law Ron --- well pigs do move around a bit so consequently both he and I missed spraying the pigs and inadvertently sprayed each other.. in this plastic snowstorm.....
the camera person was terrific and managed to get 14 different useable shots. My pickup truck remained a snowy, stickey reminder long after I had deposited the check....
