Jeanine Pirro, lawyer, prosecutor, and former District Attorney of New York’s Westchester County, does not mess around – though her pet pot-bellied pig Wilbur does, occasionally. A self-proclaimed pet lover and supporter of animal rights, Pirro has added Wilbur and two very well-bred white and black Poodles, Miki and Dartina, to her family.
Just as Pirro surrounds herself with beautiful, Romanesque design at her home in upstate New York, she treats 18-year-old Wilbur to his own posh place – a small “pig house” in the backyard. “It’s heated. He’s got plumbing here, he’s got water, he’s got a pool,” Pirro grins. “At Christmastime he gets a wreath, at Halloween we dress it up for him!”
Garnering a love for barnyard animals from her childhood in a farm town of upstate New York, Pirro loves to shock her friends with her unusual pet.
“I used to have black tie parties, and I would leave the doors open and leave some food and they would just come in,” Pirro says of her pigs. “And people were like, “ahhh!” and I loved it, I just loved the incongruity – the juxtaposition of women who were so refined and my pigs walking around just grunting.”
A dynamo of posh and practical, Pirro claims that she can’t truly be defined by her breed of dogs. “I guess a Poodle woman who is a woman who very refined, always of the best design, and perfect, and always manicured – that’s not me.”
Miki and Dartina, who are, actually, always freshly manicured, have truly added joy to Pirro’s already accomplished life. “There’s an incredible energy that goes back and forth between an owner and an animal, that if you don’t take advantage of you’re missing one of the great things in life. This is one of the pleasures that I have… Animals are very important to me – they always have been.”
Followers of Pirro’s career have seen this dedication to animals in the past with her effort to change the New York legal system’s attitude towards pet abuse and ownership issues, especially in domestic violence cases. Pirro even started one of the first domestic violence units in the nation in 1978, which took into account the deaths and abuse inflicted upon animals in these damaged relationships.
Pirro mentions to keep our eyes open for domestic cases like these on her upcoming television show, Judge Pirro, on the CW Network, beginning in September, 2008 – and we look forward to watching her continue her role as animal advocate on national TV!
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