Dora Wei is used to seeing exotic wildlife around her home in the Hill Country of Sri Lanka, but when a newborn wild boar showed up on her doorstep in September, she was shocked.

“My gardener found her near my house in the early morning,” Wei told The Dodo. “She was only a few hours old. She had been separated from her mom and was looking very cold.”

Wei and her boyfriend knew that without a mom, the tiny animal wouldn’t survive on her own. So they made her a little sleeping area in their living room and kept her warm with hot water bottles.

“I asked around about how to take care of wild boars, and everyone said it’s not easy if they are this young and that they always die without the mother, but we were determined to keep her,” Wei said. “We read online that she would need to be fed every hour, so my boyfriend and I took turns sleeping in the living room with her for almost the first four weeks, feeding her every hour when she woke up and started crying.”

“It was really like taking care of a baby for us,” she added.

Wei named the wild boar Yezhu and introduced her to her four dogs. She worried that the little pig wouldn’t fit in with the pack, but Yezhu refused to be ignored by her furry siblings.

“She would always want to be with them — especially the Labrador,” Wei said. “She would always want to follow him and lie down next to him or sit on him.”

“She’s really nice to all the dogs even though they do bark at her when she tries to steal their food,” Wei added. “She really thinks she is one of them.”

Now, Yezhu does everything her dog siblings do including napping, …

Playing with their toys …

And, of course, eating their food. 

Wild boars don’t have the best vision, but as Yezhu grew, Wei discovered that she was blind in one eye. Knowing that she couldn’t be released into the wild, Wei and her boyfriend built the little pig her very own house outside in the garden, complete with a pool to cool off in during hot days.

At night, Yezhu comes inside to get plenty of pets and sleep with her human and dog family.

“Her favorite thing to do would be digging up the garden and dipping in her own little pool,” Wei said. “And she loves getting belly rubs while she sleeps.”

Yezhu came into her mom’s life at the perfect time and has brought so much joy to her family. And it’s rare to find the little boar without a smile on her face.

“It was during a really hard and depressing time with the lockdown situation in the whole country when we found her,” Wei said. “She really did make us closer, and our life is more positive when we’re taking care of her and seeing her grow up.”