They were a pair — a pig named Charlie Bacon and a dog named Rip.
They were known for chasing each other around the barnyard in their Virginia suburb. The pig, always a bit mischievous, would often eat the dog’s food and hang out with the alpacas. He acted as if they were all equals, never mind that he was a mere 35 pounds.
Rip was always nearby.
Bred to keep farm animals safe from predators, Rip kept watch as the incessant guardian of his herd — a mishmash of chickens, geese and goats.
So, it came as no surprise Monday — when Charlie escaped from the roughly 1½-acre farm in the Manassas area — that Rip, a Great Pyrenees, followed. After all, it was his job to protect. So off they went, romping through a grassy field.
“It reminds me of a Walt Disney movie,” said Brenda Conway, a former school bus driver and pet shop worker who joined a crew of neighbors, police and others who tried to get the duo home safely. “They were together, one looking out for the other — until the end.”
Their real-life adventure would end in elation and sorrow, as a community’s efforts to save them both would fall tragically short.
The tale began last weekend, when the less-than-a-year old Charlie wedged his way under a fence and started hanging out on the grass outside the barnyard.
Jennifer Macri, Charlie’s owner, yelled over to him, and he headed back into the yard. “He knew he was being naughty,” she said.
Macri said she fixed the area where Charlie managed to push his way through the fence, which has anti-dig panels to help prevent animals from getting in or out. Then on Monday, before leaving for a business trip in Seattle, she said she checked again for weak spots. She had arranged for friends and farmhands to care for the animals while she was away for the week.
Later on Monday, she got a call from a neighbor. Charlie was outside the fence again, this time with Rip. A group of neighbors rallied to get them safely back inside, with one who knows Rip well leading the way. Macri said neighbors used large rocks and boards to block off the weak point in the fence. She lined up a contractor to upgrade that section, and he planned to come out as soon as it stopped raining.
Early Tuesday, she got word that Charlie and Rip had slipped back out. A friend said they weren’t too far from her home, but were making their way to Dale Boulevard, a busy road.
Macri said she immediately called local animal control officials, telling them she couldn’t leave the West Coast, was a single mom and needed their help to catch her runaway animals. She also reached out to Conway. Neighbors had been posting updates on the escapees’ whereabouts, and Macri needed assistance keeping track of all the developments.
“Rip was never one I had to worry about leaving the yard,” Macri said. “He was trying to get Charlie back safe.”
She’d gotten Rip, who is about a year old, from a farm in southern Virginia, and he and his parents had been raised as livestock guardian dogs. She needed him to help stop foxes from eating her chickens.
“He was a good fit,” she said. He’d keep watch, stopping the barnyard goose from bullying the chickens, and he seemed tight with the two alpacas, Macri said.
Macri had named Rip after a character who plays a caretaker on the drama “Yellowstone,” and Rip was good at scaring away the predators.
Her 8-year-old son adored him. The dog would bark and run to the fence, standing on his hind legs to greet the boy. When they’d come into the barnyard area, Rip “danced” with them, Macri said — putting his paws on her shoulders and resting his head against her face.
“Rip thought of everyone as his little herd,” she said.
Macri had gotten Charlie four months ago from a pig breeder in Stafford, Virginia. Her son had helped name him, adding the last name Bacon. His favorite treat: cucumbers. She had hoped Charlie would be an indoor, house-pet pig. But that didn’t work. With his sweet, goofy, clever and curious spirit, he didn’t like being stuck indoors. He escaped a few times from his crate inside the house.
About two weeks ago, Macri said she decided to put Charlie in the barnyard with the other animals.
He took to it like a pig in you know what.
He was thrilled, she said, and wagged his little tail. He explored and ran in circles as he played with the other creatures. He preferred hanging out with the dogs, seeming to deem them on his level intellectually, Macri said. “He thinks they’re his equal,” she said.
He and Rip became inseparable.
When the goats tried to pick on Charlie, Rip protected him. The dog would often tuck his snout into the food bowl, right alongside the pig’s, a seeming attempt to keep the hungry goats from barging their way in, Macri said.
Macri knew the pig and the dog would stick together out in the wild and warned people trying to help find them not to chase them. They’d be scared and flee, she said, plus, her little pig hates being touched or picked up.
For hours, Macri said, she bounced between running a conference that was part of her job as an IT security expert and peering at her phone for updates.
In Virginia, Conway was like Nancy Drew on the case of the runaway Charlie and Rip. Her Facebook page lit up with people reporting sightings. There they were, dripping wet by a curb. Footage from a front-door camera captured them dashing by, with Charlie in the lead and Rip trotting beside him.
“I’m searching for them but don’t see them. Ugh. I’m worried,” one poster wrote.
“Does anyone know the pig and if it bites?” asked another.
“PLEASE don’t chase them,” one warned.
Conway said she became increasingly worried. As the duo’s locations kept getting posted, more and more people headed out to try to help. But that sent the two further into “flight mode,” she said. She started deleting some of the locations where they’d been spotted.
The authorities had also joined the effort.
“We are all out here. There’s about 10 cruisers,” an official from the Prince William County Sheriff’s Office texted Conway at one point. The official told her Rip “just won’t stop running.”
Conway texted back that she hated that people were “out chasing.”
“Praying he’s not hurt,” Conway wrote.
A pet lover with three rescue dogs of her own, Conway had retired 13 years ago. At one point, she got fired from a pet shop for refusing to sell a man a rabbit. (She was convinced he was going to feed it to his snake.) Now she runs her page, Lost and Found pets Prince William County, Va., full time. It’s grown from 1,000 followers to over 21,000.
By midmorning, Conway got a message: “The pig is in the woods … Seemed friendly but skittish.”
“They both are very much afraid and running from everyone,” another person wrote.
She then received a disturbing text from a sheriff’s official, who wrote that Rip “apparently got clipped by a truck,” but managed to run off.
The rescue mission continued.
Two police officers arrived at a rainy intersection and tried to bring Charlie in. He kept running, zigging and zagging as he fled, video of the police chase that was shared on social media shows.
But they finally managed to close in.
“We got the pig. It’s in custody,” a sheriff’s official texted Conway moments later.
Macri got a call with the update. But there was still a shared worry in Seattle and Virginia — where was Rip?
“That was my worst fear, that no one knew where he went, and he just kept going,” Conway said. “He went one way when they got the pig. I think that dog kept going because he was out looking for the pig.”
Animal control officers asked Conway if she’d come out and bring her trail cameras to monitor some traps they had set up to try to catch Rip. She jumped in her Kia Sportage and headed for the woods where a trap had been set up. She sprinkled some dog food on the grass to try to entice him.
Macri said she believes Rip was probably following Charlie’s scent. “He was looking for him. He does that,” she said.
Conway then drove slowly around the area with her hazard lights flashing, hoping to catch a glimpse of Rip. She passed a driver who asked if she was looking for the lost dog.
She drove another block, near Dale Boulevard and Trident Lane.
People were kneeling beside Rip, trying to get him off the road. He had been struck.
When a local officer called Macri to tell her, she began to cry. Days later, back at home, she would tell her son. “He was devastated,” she said.
She picked up Charlie Bacon from the animal shelter. He is staying in the house for now, until the fence can be fixed. Once Charlie makes it back to the barnyard, he is going to “be sad that his best buddy is missing,” she said.
“Rip was doing his job, and he did it until the very end,” Macri said, “to make sure Charlie was okay.”
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