Instantly, he jumped in his truck and raced the 1 1/2 miles to his St. Johns home. When he got there, he couldn't believe what he saw.
"The officer had the pig on the trunk of her car," Miller recalled, "and she was pushing down on the pig's belly. "
North Precinct Officer Elizabeth Willard, her uniform bloodied, had wrapped the injured pig in a Mylar blanket and was doing chest compressions to try to save him. The couple had brought home the 3-month-old pig just days earlier from a farm in Washington.
"What she did was extraordinary," Miller said of the officer. "She just, wow, went above and beyond her call of duty."
Miller then checked the pig.
"I thought I felt a heartbeat," he said. So he took the animal from Officer Willard and quickly drove to the nearby Companion Pet Clinic. "I had to try," he said.
For at least three years, Rich Miller said, his wife Windy Miller had yearned to get a pig for a pet. Last Friday, he gave in. The couple drove to a farm in Spanaway and paid $400 for a male Koon Koon pot-bellied pig that Windy had found online.
They named the tan and black-spotted pig Hamilton (with an emphasis on the first syllable) Archibald Miller. His initials, thus, HAM. He was no more than a foot tall, under 15 pounds.
The couple turned an old wooden dog house into a pig pen. Hamilton had room to roam on straw and wood chips under a covered, fenced-in area.
The couple's three dogs – a Rottweiler, American bulldog and mini Pinscher were "a little inquisitive" about the new inhabitant, Rich Miller said. They didn't bark at Hamilton, but curiously sniffed him.
On Sunday, the couple even brought Hamilton into their home, along with their dogs, for several hours.
"Everything was kosher," Rich Miller said of the dogs' relationship with the new pet.
So when he left for work Monday morning, he didn't think twice about leaving the pigpen's door unsecured. But later in the morning, neighbors heard a commotion.
"I was in my office, with the windows closed, and I just heard a loud squealing sound," said Josh Duncan, an elder of the Red Sea Church, just two doors down. "It sounded like someone was torturing an animal."
Duncan and another neighbor came outside, and heard the barking and squealing. A next door neighbor called police. Officer Willard responded.
"Coming up on the call, you could hear the pig screaming," Willard said.
She followed the squeals, and was greeted by a sturdy green fence that read, "BEWARE of DOG," and "Restricted area: Do not enter Authorized Personnel Only." She looked over the fence and saw two large dogs and a smaller one. A Rottweiler was standing over the pig, barking at the other dogs.
"I saw this poor little pig, laying on its side, pretty bloody," she recalled.
Willard called for an animal control officer, but she didn't wait. She took out her Taser first, but then replaced it with her pepper spray instead, in case the dogs attacked. But the dogs, muzzles covered in blood, were friendly [to her].
Willard ran back to her patrol car, grabbed a Mylar blanket and rushed to the side of the pig. His breathing was labored.
She wrapped Hamilton in the blanket and held him like a baby, close to her body. She kept her hand on his chest, and felt a heart beat. Suddenly, the beating stopped, and she started chest compressions– the first time she'd done CPR in 13 years on the force.
Willard, 42, said she had considered it on her way to the call. "I had actually kind of pre-planned it, thinking , 'What happens if its heart stops? I'm going to do compressions."
As Rich Miller rushed Hamilton to the vet, Officer Willard stayed behind and hosed down the blood stains on the back patio. But at the vet, the news was sad: Hamilton, having suffered deep gashes to his chest and back, didn't survive.
As upset as they were, the Millers said Wednesday that they were thankful Willard was the officer who responded.
"We forgot to tell her how grateful we were," Rich Miller said.
Mike Oswald, director of Multnomah County's Animal Services, was also impressed, and said CPR on animals can work.
"I think that's very admirable of an officer to have that kind of compassion, to try to save an animal's life," he said. "That's commendable."
(Oregon Live - June 20, 2012)
