By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer

MONMOUTH – When Whiskers wants a cookie, Whiskers gets a cookie.

She might come on command for one. She might sit on command for one.

Or she might just snort and push at owner Bill Johnson, stretching her snout toward his hand until he gives in.

After all, how do you say no to a 400-pound pig?

“She’s just so much fun. I laugh,” Johnson said.

He got Whiskers two years ago from a friend who raised Yorkshire pigs. Johnson helped his friend with a water problem. In return, the friend met him at a local restaurant and handed Johnson a canvas bag. Whiskers poked her head out.

She weighed 25 pounds, a small bundle with expressive brown eyes and big ears. She was the runt of the litter and Johnson could hold her in his hands.

After two years of grain, homegrown vegetables, milk, bread – and the occasional cookie or Milk-Bone dog biscuit – she is a runt no longer.

Johnson, a computer specialist who had always liked pigs as a kid, made a home for her in an old barn beside his house. Inside, she has hay to sleep on. Outside, she has mud to wallow in, a necessity to protect her pale pink skin from the sun.

“Once you have a sunburned pig, whoa. You don’t want that,” said Johnson.

He called her Whiskers because she’s covered in coarse whisker-like hair. His girlfriend calls her something else: Princess.

Whiskers is sometimes stubborn, slightly spoiled, usually the center of attention on their quiet country street.

“When she’s out and people drive by, the brakes come on,” Johnson said as Whiskers trotted down the wide front lawn toward an apple tree. Her ears flapped in the breeze. She smiled.

She is more pet than farm animal.

Scratch just the right spot on her shoulder and she closes her eyes in ecstasy. She bites at the barn gate and rattles the latch when she wants out. She comes to “come,” sits to “sit” and looks around for a treat when Johnson says “good pig.”

“They train easy if you work at it,” said Johnson, who lets his young nieces and nephews ride on her back when they visit.

He believes Whiskers can live to be 10 to 20 years old. A neighbor jokes about inviting her over for a barbecue, but Johnson isn’t about to turn his pet into dinner.

“People say, Why do you keep that pig?'” he said, scratching her back. “I don’t know. I don’t really have a good answer. But she’s fun.”