In Texas, most veterinarians come from Texas A&M. The Aggies are justifiably proud of their Veterinary Medicine program. The Aggies are also traditional and rather conservative.

During my preliminary investigations about different kinds of pigs I realized they came in all sorts of shapes and sizes. For practical reasons I was drawn toward a variety of pig I had read about in the scientific literature called the Hanford miniature. This pig was developed in the state of Washington some years ago as a laboratory animal. A fully grown standard pig is a sizeable creature, sometimes reaching seven or eight hundred pounds, so it became imperative for science to have a much smaller variety, and the Hanford miniature was developed. In researching all this, I soon realized the incredible cruelty that was inflicted on these animals in the name of science. I read about burn research and nuclear radiation experiments. I read about alcoholism studies where pigs were fed ethanol and then killed for liver necropsies. It was a long list. Surely, I thought, in the face of all this, people would not object to my project. What I wanted to do in the name of art wasn't cruel at all compared to what I saw done in the name of science.

There was, to my pleasant surprise, a small population of Hanford miniature pigs at Texas A&M, so I wrote the chairman of the School of Veterinary Medicine, explaining my project. I received an emphatic negative response. I wish I had kept the letter. It was written in a tone so irate and dismissive that, when I read it, my immediate response was to wad it up and throw it in the trash. Today it would have been an amusing document. As a consequence of this experience, I knew I had to stop telling people in advance about the project, and I knew I had to get a standard-size pig.

I visited a hog farm right outside of Denton and got a two-month-old Chester White pig.

I named him Minnesota.

:::l e s s
m o r e:::