Theo is snoring on a bed made of hay. The 800-pound pig is napping after embarking on the adventure of a lifetime. 

"He was just on the highway, running,” says Tina Jensen-Fogt. The animal control officer says she’ll never forget seeing him for the first time. "I remember thinking, 'Oh my gosh! This pig is huge!'"

After Jensen-Fogt and the team at the Langley Animal Protection Society rescued Theo, they discovered the big pig had an even bigger personality.

"Theo is such a charmer,” she says with a smile.

Yet the pig was never claimed, and despite wearing a bow-tie in social media posts, failed to find a forever home.

"He really needed another pig," says Jensen-Fogt. “Pigs are super social.”

She didn’t want Theo’s exuberance to be diminished by loneliness.

After 224 days in Langley, Theo was adopted by an animal sanctuary in Duncan, where he might be able to make a love connection.

Jensen-Fogt enticed Theo travel by buying him Valentine's Day donuts with pink and red icing in the shapes of x’s and o’s. That was followed by the pig wearing a captain’s hat on board a ‘Love Boat’ of sorts; Theo travelled by BC Ferries from the mainland to Vancouver Island. 

When they arrived at the Home for Hooves Animal Sanctuary, things didn’t not go according to plan.

“It turned out to be a gong show,” says founder Michelle Singleton. “We couldn’t get the trailer down there.”

So they created a barrier of people and cars along the path to the pig’s new pad. There was concern that animal might run with fear, instead Theo sauntered with confidence. 

The next concern was that the blind-date would go horribly wrong; there might be a fight along the fence between Theo and Lillian.

“She hasn’t been with other pigs,” Singleton says. “This is a huge deal.”

But Lillian and Theo defied expectations. Jensen-Fogt says they seemed genuinely happy to see each other. 

The connection that seemed like love at first sight has increased a couple days later.

“Oh she’s smitten!” says Singleton with a smile. “She stands there and waits for him to come over and they do their little thing at the fence.”

That “little thing” is a touching of noses that looks like big kisses. Perhaps when Theo wakes from his snoring slumber he’ll realize this new love is not a hopeful dream, but a happily-ever-after reality.

Watch the Sawatsky Sign-Off Nightly at 6:55 p.m.