Like a Pixie Stick for Dogs

So I put the dogs out on Monday evening when I got home from work. They were hot so I sprayed them down with the hose and let them run around for a while. Then I got the mail and perused the paper, drank a beer, checked on my garlic, and pulled a few weeds at the front of the house. I then heard a weird noise coming from the back yard. A kind of thrashing and banging and mad panting with a sort of growl The brown dog was furiously playing with this corrugated pipe:

See how the end is all crimped up? He had been playing with it (and chewing on it) for some time apparently. It was about 5 feet long and maybe 6-8 inches in diameter. I watched him for awhile as he flung it around, wrestled it, ran it around in circles. I felt bad. I am a bad pet owner. My dog is so bored as to be reduced to playing with a junk piece of pipe. So I took it away from him. He was really annoyed. I was suprised at how annoyed he was. It was just a pipe. And as the brown dog strained on his leash to get the pipe back, the pipe squealed really loudly and scared me, causing me to drop it, causing the brown dog to wildly jump up and down cause the pipe was just out of his reach. Then I saw this:

There was something brown and furry in this pipe. Something that had just had a really bad day, possibly the worst day of it's life. Something that was probably reeling with dizziness and about to puke from being flung around the yard for the last 20 minutes or so by my dog. The brown furry thing squealed again. Hey I know that squeal. That's a whistle pig! And sure enough, looking into the end of the pipe that wasn't crimped, there was the bottom of a baby whistle pig. He was wedged in there pretty good. I turned the pipe to try and shake him out near his home burrow, but he wasn't coming out backwards. So I had to get some shears and cut the end off the front of the pipe where it had been all chewed. Finally, after much cajoling and then resorting to nudging him out with a long stick, he emerged and staggered toward the burrow like a drunken sailor. I could have just left him alone, but it was about 95 degrees and the pipe was black and I was afraid if I didn't get him out of there, he'd die of heat stroke.

I don't know how many babies there are. This is the first time I've seen one. So their home is less than ten feet away from my enormous FENCELESS garden and there is an entire whistle pig family living under my shed and yet nothing in the garden has been touched. What gives? Who knew that ground hogs could be considerate. But that could be over and done with now. Brown dog crossed the line and messed with one of the kids. My garden will probably be a sea of green stubs when I get home today.