this is my best friend hank super proud of his little sister! come out to @glasshalffull.nola now to meet phoebe and recycle your glass 🐽❤️

this is my best friend hank on his birthday! we only had three with him, but we celebrate every year like he’s still with us—because he is. happy 6th, bud 🐽❤️

this is my best friend hank partying with his sister phoebe! to celebrate his 6th birthday this year, hank wants to support one of our favorite local causes—@glasshalffull.nola this glass recycling service was launched by a group of students to create sand and help restore the gulf coast, and they're currently raising money for a new recycling facility. they are hosting their first ever GLASS GALA on thursday, oct. 13—hank's birthday! if hank were still here, we would definitely convince him that this fancy party was all for him. send us a DM if you'll be there too, we'd love to meet you (full disclosure: we don't run this organization, we just think it's cute that it shares his last name) also, hank's sister phoebe has agreed to make an appearance at glass half full's glass drop-off event on saturday, oct. 15 at 10am! if you miss giving hank little snoot boops, swing by to meet her. no donation necessary, but please consider supporting this great cause while you're there, and bring your glass in to recycle. for all hank's friends further away, hank is also accepting donations for the facility on venmo, and 100% will go directly to glass half full. send your donations to hank's mom at @ ashglass and write “happy birthday hank”—any amount would mean the world to us and help him support the local cause that shares his name. we're excited to celebrate hank's birthday with y'all any way you can 🐽❤️

this is my best friend hank still celebrating his favorite time of year. . this mardi gras we went to all seven nights of parades so hank could decorate his fence with a special bead from each. . also today, march 1, is national pig day! hank would have loved that it fell on fat tuesday this year. and he would have no doubt used it to squeeze some extra king cake out of us. . just wanted to share with y’all and say happy mardi gras from hank, sheep, and family 💜💚💛

this is my best friend hank the way we knew him. . five years ago today, we brought home this pig that contained multitudes. we did our best to show you every side of him—the goof, the snuggle butt, the tough guy, the intellectual—so that you could love him as completely as we did. . though we kept our family pictures mostly private, we’re feeling thankful that we got to watch him grow up, and we thought you might like to see some of what we saw at home. hank always had a way of making us feel loved and attended to, and after five years, nothing is clearer to us than this—that we belonged to him. . we still do. happy gotcha day, bud.

this is my best friend hank ready to visit his friends again. . a year ago this morning, our best friend passed away unexpectedly. it was absolutely devastating, and working through it has been . . . hard. for a lot of reasons. mostly, simply because we lost the thing that was most important to us in the whole world. . it was also hard for us, and for many of you grieving with us, that we couldn’t safely hold a public gathering in his honor due to the pandemic. for all he accomplished, all the kindness he spread and good work he did in our city—we would have loved to send him off with some new orleans style fanfare. . still, it was always our plan to allow you to visit him again when it was safe, and while we’re all remembering him today (we made his favorite for dinner—blueberry muffins), we’d like to show you what we’re working on. . in the front yard of hank’s house, there is now a beautiful stone with our favorite picture of him etched onto it, ready to be visited, talked to, and loved. we love to boop his snoot and invite you to as well. . and, so that friends can enjoy a blueberry with hank when they visit, we have planted blueberry bushes in the flowerbed next to his stone. they are young and will take time to produce, but for now we always have blueberries in the fridge. . our forever grief thankfully now includes a lot of humor in remembering what a weirdo hank was. we still miss him every day, but we also now laugh with him every day, talking to him on the way in and out of the house and still finding his personality all over our lives. . we’d love for you to stop by and have a laugh or a cry with us too. . more details are available on his website in the memorial tab. thanks always for your kindness. 🐽❤️

this is my best friend hank eating king cake at his first mardi gras. some of you may recognize the throwback from his book. . today is fat tuesday. on a normal year, the city would be full of color and life. music and parades. friends, beads, and king cake. this year, it’s quiet. . hank would have loved it. . he would have been so sad for his friends that the parades were cancelled, and he would have missed riding as royalty in barkus—but he would have loved being able to drive leisurely past the floats in city park. he would have loved surprising people at their house floats, oinking at them from his car for throws. he would have *loved* staying inside with the heater on and eating an entire king cake. he would have loved that we were safe. . do our new orleans boy a favor: find some joy on this day that was always such a big part of his life, and eat something good for fat tuesday—nina and phoebe are eating king cake. . #mardigras #kingcake #fattuesday #neworleans #nola #sisters #friends #gimme #cake #treat #diva #minipig #pig #pigsofinstagram #mybestfriendhank #cutepetclub #cute #animaladdicts #babyanimals #weeklyfluff

this is my best friend hank watching the fireworks from above. . the holidays this year have been tough without hank. starting a new year without him in it feels very sad. . but new year’s eve is special—we get to look at the sky and see hank’s star as fireworks burst all around it. . tonight, while the neighborhood shoots little sparkles up to our boy, we’ll be toasting to him. if you can see the constellation orion tonight in your part of the world, hank is up there in his elbow. if you’re having champagne too, give hank a little cheers 🥂 . happy new year, friends.

this is my best friend hank living on in the love he left with us. . today is “HANKS”giving—our boy’s favorite holiday. we’ll be setting out an extra plate for hank, but we also thought today was a good day to share some news. . meet his new sisters. on the left, nina (5 years old) is a gentle giant whose favorite food is bananas. she loves digging holes in the yard after it rains. nina often looks startlingly like hank, and they actually met at a play date when hank was a baby. phoebe (4 years old next month) is small but scrappy. her favorite food is whatever nina is having, and if you have chapstick in your pocket she will find it. she LOVES music. and, she uses a lot of the same snuggle techniques that hank did. both, of course, have moved into the big bed with us and have joined our family permanently. . hank opened a section of our hearts that we hadn't accessed before. when he left us, that love didn't leave with him. we had so much more of this new love to give him. years and years worth, now with no place to go.  . then two local pig friends reached out, each needing a new home for different reasons. they came from loving homes who are still involved but who knew that their girls needed more space and attention. we thought about what hank would want. . you all know what he would want. . we're not planning to use this channel to post about them. it will always be dedicated to hank. but, we wanted to let all of you know that these girls are with us now and helping us to heal. . and we think that means that hank is with us too, because the love he built in us has a place to go again. love in action in our home every day—that's hank saying hello.

this is my best friend hank's fourth birthday. . four. our chunky angel is four. when he came home to us, he weighed as many pounds. he was smaller than the sheep and loved to snuggle inside pillowcases. it really scared us the first time—we were looking all over the house for him, and there he was just napping inside a pillow like nothing was wrong. . it's a familiar feeling now. we still look all over the house for him, and we find him in so many unexpected places: the corners where he rubbed his snoot on the wall, the hairs left in his favorite snuggle spots, the crunch and crinkle of snacks that would send him flying down the hallway for a bite. . it's wonderful, and it also hurts. we get to see him and be with him every day, but in a different way. we can't snuggle him anymore, but we feel his warmth around us. we can't give him bites of our food, but we feel his contagious excitement when we taste his favorites. . simply put, while we want him back more than anything, we realize that he's not actually gone. we can see that he is still here and everywhere. today, on his birthday, we wanted to honor that and also check in with his family all over the world. . today, we just wanted to share our favorite picture of hank. it's not particularly silly or ridiculous, but it's a beautiful reminder of his smiling face—he was just happy to be in the back yard with us, always. . thank you for being there with him too.

this is my best friend hank holding a place of honor in our home, always. . friends—we have test results, but we've been struggling for quite a while with how much detail to give. we're still crying every day over the loss of our best friend. but—you are all hank's best friends too, and we decided that we simply need to share with you. . if you don't want more details on his passing, skip the next two paragraphs and just know that absolutely everything was done to save hank's life. that everyone was overly-cautious and attentive at every stage of this medical situation. and that nothing at all could have happened differently. . the tests showed that hank had a delayed anaphylactic reaction—his airway swelled up as a reaction to his intubation, but more than 24 hours later. it's rare for that type of fatal swelling to occur so long after the procedure. almost all of the time, if it occurs, it occurs immediately. despite that, he was given a steroid shot at the vet to protect against the possibility. he was given another at home the next day at the first sign of trouble. both were long-acting and still in his system as two teams of vets walked us through cpr. it simply wasn't enough. he passed in his safe spot—his bed—with us telling him that we loved him. . this was an unavoidable tragedy. even if the reaction had occurred at the vet, his doctors say he still would have passed. it is comforting to us that, instead, he was surrounded by love until the end. he got to fall asleep in his bed being held by his mom and dad. his passing will never feel fair, but at the very least, we got to be there for him. . we know this post is sad. and we know how much hank meant to all of you. we're still getting through your messages as fast as we can, but some expired before we could get to them. we are extremely saddened by that—we've never lost a message, ever. if we haven't replied to your message yet and you sent it 3+ weeks ago, it would help us if you resend. . thank you all so much. we'll post this coming week with plans for hank's legacy, but just know that this page will never be sold or removed—you can all come visit hank here whenever you like 🐽❤️

this is my best friend hank still with us—all of us. . today is national best friend day, and we are once again finding ourselves incredibly grateful for all of you, hank's best friends. you have offered your kindness and respect so generously over the past three weeks, and it has meant the world to us that we aren't grieving alone. hank would be so touched and so proud. . that kindness has come in many forms—comments, messages, stories, emails, letters, donations in hank's name, flowers—and all have absolutely touched our hearts. we wanted to share a couple things with y'all that hank would have been pretty excited to show off. . first, all of the flowers we've gotten have turned his bed into a little oasis in his kitchen (and he definitely would have eaten them). second, some of our mini pig friends chipped in and named a star after hank (😭) so he can shine forever. and third, a local artist friend (who illustrated gonzo's book) framed hank's snout painting—which as you all saw is truly a one-of-a-kind abstract masterpiece. . we're still going through all of your comments and messages, so please know that even if we haven't seen yours yet, we will. and it will offer us comfort as so many already have. this family that hank created has been our strength during the saddest time of our lives. thank you all so much 🐽❤️