Pat Brown's campaign to save her 20-year-old potbelly pig came to a halt Saturday.
Her beloved Gwendolyn passed away Saturday morning around 7 a.m. Brown, who found herself on the wrong side of a zoning violation in Prince George's County for keeping the pig, posted the news on her "Save Criminal Profiler Pat Brown's Pet Pig, Gwendolyn!" Facebook page:
My dearest friends, My beloved Gwendolyn passed over this morning at around 7 AM. She gave me her message yesterday that she was ready to go when she stopped accepting water from the glass and I knew wasn’t going she wasn’t going to be with me much longer. I lay down w...ith her last evening and for most of the night she was quiet. Then around 6 AM she started to cry and, for the first time, I could tell she was in some sort of discomfort. I rubbed her tummy and spoke softly to her and this went on for about thirty minutes. Then she became quiet and she just let me hug and kiss her for another half hour or so and then she was gone.
Brown originally bought Gwendolyn in 1990 as a pet for her children, who are now grown adults. At the time, Brown said it was the craze to buy potbelly pigs as pets.
A nationally known authority on criminal profiling, Brown had kept the pig at her house in Berwyn Heights, Md. But in December 2009, the Prince George's County zoning board said Gwendolyn had to go, and that it was against zoning rules to keep or raise livestock or any animal that's not customarily a household pet in a single family residence.
Brown says she called PIGS Animal Sanctuary in West Virginia for expert support that moving Gwendolyn off her property would kill her. She also created the Facebook page to "help fight the PG Pigsecution of Gwendolyn."
Several of the page's over 3,000 members sent their condolences on Brown's loss Saturday, some noting that at least the county was not able to make Gwendolyn leave her long-time home.
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Brown, meanwhile, said she hopes that many of the page's members will stay with her as she works "to promote Gwendolyn’s Law for all of Gwenny’s brothers and sisters out there."
