[piano intro] [gentle acoustic guitar music] - [Heather] Travel with us across the state and meet some very distinctive critters who are delighting people with their work and charm.

- What drives us is seeing the smiles on people's faces, the joy that we bring.

I mean, he's our pet.

We never thought our pet would be the superstar that he is.

- [Heather] We learn animals can do amazing things, whether by skill or sheer star power.

This cuteness overload is all on "My Home," next.

[gentle upbeat country music] All across the state, we're uncovering the unique stories that make North Carolina "My Home."

♪ Come home ♪ ♪ Come home ♪ [exciting music] - [Announcer] Everybody, give it up for Ripken!

[crowd cheering] [upbeat music] - The first year we brought Ripken out, people loved him, but I could still get in and out of the stadium pretty easily.

Now, I have to plan my trips accordingly.

- We have people lined up to get their pictures taken with him.

He's got his own shirts.

People are asking for his autograph.

I'm like, you know, that's my husband's autograph, right?

I mean, I feel like I am going somewhere with a famous professional athlete who is my dog.

- Seeing the smiles on people's faces, the joy that we bring, it really makes my job worth it.

What we do worth it.

I mean, he's our pet, but we never thought our pet would be the superstar that he is.

Ripken come.

Heel, heel.

Sit.

Champ, sit.

Ripken, back.

Come.

Good boy, heel.

Sit, sit, good.

Good boys, good boys, good boys.

This is an area where I like to bring Ripken and Champ to train pretty frequently throughout the week.

Ripken, back.

Sit, down.

Down, good boy.

Training is definitely a commitment and a lifelong thing.

Everybody asks me how long did it take you to train Ripken to fetch tees and get bats?

My response to them is, I don't know.

We come across something new every day, whether it's the UPS guy ringing the doorbell, or it's going out to Lowe's and walking through the store and seeing a forklift for the first time.

For me, it's important to let my dogs experience those things so that there's no fear when we get out there on the field.

My whole life, I was an athlete.

When I got to college, playing at the Division One level, I decided to stop playing baseball after my freshman year, which was a very difficult decision because I thought I was gonna be playing for the Durham Bulls.

I was gonna be playing under the lights in Camden Yards Stadium.

It was just always a passion to get back into baseball somehow.

I have a good friend out in Boise, Idaho.

I knew he had a dog named Cowboy Cole that did retrieval work for Boise State University and I gave him a call and said, "Hey, I want to get my dog into fetching baseball bats."

And he said, "Oh, I have the dog for you."

He flew me out, Ripken, picked him up at the airport here in Raleigh and it was the greatest thing ever.

I mean, he was just a very special pup.

I knew that from the very beginning and we started day one at eight weeks just playing fetch with little bats and as he started getting older, started adding the obedience, getting the bats and going over things straight and working around distractions.

I mean, I'd put on all my old catchers gear and would make sure he wasn't scared of me when I was wearing it.

- Michael knew from day one that this was what he wanted to do with Ripken, but it was just a matter of getting him out there, so we ended up pitching the idea to the Holly Spring Salamanders and that's what really ended up just taking off.

- A fun story her at five.

This guy right here is Ripken, the bat dog.

He's an unofficial team member of the Holly Spring Salamanders.

- [Melissa] We got a live story in the five o'clock evening news.

- He is famous here.

- Ripken's GoPro videos Michael started doing.

They ended up going viral and they were being shared like crazy.

- I had to turn my phone off because it was ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and my wife and I couldn't sleep.

- We took that to the team over at the Durham Bulls and said, "We have this dog and he can retrieve baseball bats.

He was really good at it.

Would you give him a shot?"

They were a little hesitant and so I said, "There's another dog within [indistinct] franchise that fetches bats for the Las Vegas Aviators and he was a hit out there.

Call their general manager and see what they say about Finn."

That day they called us and they said, "Okay, we're good.

Ripken can come."

- [Michael] The first bat he got, the entire stadium went absolutely crazy for him.

- Do you worry people will say that you're just letting the game go to the dogs?

- [laughing] No.

[jazzy upbeat music] - I don't know who has more fun out there at the games, me or Ripken.

You're welcome, thank you.

No cotton candy.

The players will laugh at us because you recognize the player out on the field 'cause they're in uniform, they got their names on the back, but once they leave, a lot of people don't realize it's the players walking by 'em.

And I'm sitting there with a crowd of people signing autographs for Ripken, taking pictures, and the players kind of laugh and smirk like, "Hey, thanks for keeping the crowd at bay," as they walk past.

- Just a couple more then he's gotta go.

- Hop on it quick, yep.

- He's our favorite part of the game.

- Awesome, Rip, sit.

Durham Bulls have been a huge part of my life and my relationship with Melissa.

Our first date was a Durham Bulls game, and so I only thought it was fitting we get back there to propose.

- [Melissa] Michael proposed to me on the dugout with Wool E. Bull.

They pulled me up on top of the dugout.

- I got down on one knee and the whole stadium went crazy 'cause thank God she said yes.

So the Bulls have been a vital part of our relationship from start to now.

I'm not gonna say finished because there's nothing finished yet.

We still got a long ways to go with them.

- [Melissa] That August and September with the Durham Bulls, he was only doing Friday and Saturday home games, but that's what actually led us to NC State that season.

- So we are on the way to the NC State versus UNC football game.

Ripken hopefully will get lots of tee retrievals today, so he's in the back getting some rest before we head to the stadium.

[motor humming] The atmosphere between the two stadiums is 1000% different.

Ripken feeds off of his environment really, really well.

At baseball he's super quiet and chill and he understands what his role is there.

At NC State, there's 60,000 people.

There's fireworks going off and cannons.

He's a totally different dog.

- [Melissa] I honestly had never heard Ripken bark until the first NC State football game.

- [Michael] He's so amped up.

When he hears the fireworks go off, he starts barking 'cause he knows it's his time to shine and it's his turn to get to go out on the field.

[upbeat music] [fans cheering] - [Michelle] Being out there and just seeing everyone just smiling and screaming and cheering, that's what it's all about.

We stay late, we get there early just to interact with the fans, just so people can see Ripken and take those pictures and get those autographs because we want to do that.

- [Michael] It can be tiring because it's late nights, but it's all worth it when we get to get out there and see the smiles that we put on people's faces, the comments they leave on our Instagrams and Tiktoks and Twitters.

Just the support that they show us has been huge and I can't thank them enough for all that.

- Oh, yeah.

Thanks, man.

- Thanks, man.

[upbeat music] - Mark.

Ready.

Back.

The tough thing for me is thinking about the future with Ripken.

He absolutely loves being in front of the fans and that's gonna be I think maybe just as tough for him as it is for me the day we do have to retire him.

We do have a new pup in the lineup, Champ.

My buddy called me and said, "I've got the last litter if you want a puppy."

And I didn't let him finish his sentence.

I said, "Yes, I do."

And Champ's phenomenal.

He's got the same little personality, maybe a little more personality than Ripken.

He pushes me a little bit harder.

Come, nope, Champ, come.

Champ, leave it.

Good boy.

We will start to rotate Champ in, and honestly you won't be able to tell the difference between the two.

They look like identical twins.

Everybody asked, "On the field, are you gonna just call him Ripken" I said, "No, that's not fair to Ripken."

Ripken did his job and he built his legacy.

Eventually it's gonna be Champ's turn, but it's not coming anytime soon.

Obviously every athlete wants to be at the pro level and that's I think my goal and Ripken's goal as well.

Seeing a Ripken statue in in the Hall of Fame one day would be an ultimate goal of mine.

I think life would almost be complete at that point.

[chuckling] [upbeat music continues] [gentle country music] - [Kyle] Hamilton kind of spoke to us and we really liked his spots.

He was the only one with spots in his litter.

- We got him when we'd only been dating like, I don't know, nine months, and he became obsessed with this idea of getting a pig and really it was a joke between him and his friends.

And of course, as soon as I saw them, I was like, "Oh my gosh, okay."

And he sat in my lap the entire way home and he was like our little baby.

I mean he cuddled with me every night until he was too big to.

Yeah, I mean he has his grumpy moments, but overall, he wants to be loved.

I mean, pigs are very affectionate.

- He's definitely very smart.

Twirl.

Twirl.

Twirl.

[nails clicking] He was a very social urban pig and we took him to a lot of different Raleigh establishments, breweries.

He's been to two mayor swearing in ceremonies as a guest of honor.

He's just always had this social life and I think that all just kind of clicked together that would eventually be the unofficial mascot of the Carolina Hurricanes.

[announcer speaking indistinctly] [crowd cheering] My name's Kyle Eckenrode and I'm the pig dad and my home is Raleigh, North Carolina.

One of our favorite Hamilton experiences was game seven of the 2019 playoffs when we went to DC.

The Canes at the time had never won a game seven in DC.

Everybody kept asking all day, "Are you guys going to game seven?

You going to game seven?

We need this lucky pig there."

Last second I said, "You know what, this is once in a lifetime, screw it, let's do it."

So as we started driving up, I get a call from the sports editor from the Washington Post.

He said, "Well, just so you know, if you bring an exotic animal onto the Capitol grounds, they can be confiscated."

And I was like, "Weird."

So I got really nervous and at one point we went up the Washington Monument and security guards started to approach us and I thought, "Oh no, this is not good."

And I was like, "Are we gonna be in trouble here?"

And they were like, "Why would you be in trouble?"

They were like, "This is like the least weird thing we've seen on the DC grounds."

So I realized this Washington Post guy was trying to scare us from bringing the lucky pig up to DC.

- We did a lap around the arena.

We made sure that his good leg was present.

- So that game went into double overtime and we scored and won and it was over.

That really cemented his legacy.

[upbeat music] [crowd cheering] Once we took our trip up to Washington DC, a lot of people really started catching onto this.

Then they realized this was their pig and this was their team.

Yeah, it was pretty wild.

We wake up each day to news vans.

Everybody wanted to get the scoop on what Hamilton was doing next, where he was going next.

And when they first invited us into the stadium, they literally rolled out the red carpet and they took us to the VIP entrance, which then became the very important pig entrance.

It was different and something fun that nobody had ever done before.

- I mean, Kyle is a marketing genius.

Just the little things that he came up with to really encourage it all to happen.

- We knew we had this like big following online and so I had Hamilton pin buttons made and I would post before a game like, hey, if you yell out, you know, around Thanksgiving we did Eat More Turkey.

So like we started this whole thing where like people in the parking lots would just be screaming, "Eat more turkey."

And we'd go around and hand out buttons and stuff.

- He just really believed in Hamilton and the Hurricanes and wanted to that I think to be a really big part of our family.

- Things did change when Parker came and Hamilton is semi-retired a bit, you know, talk about that a little bit.

- He was still small when all of this first started.

As you can see, he's not as small anymore.

- Yeah, he, when we were doing it, he could jump into the truck and I think he probably still could, but we've built him a ramp now that allows him to get in and out of the vehicle.

I think Hamilton's happier too.

He just, he gets to sleep a lot more and spend a lot more time in his own area.

- [Karoline] Yeah, but less treats too.

I think he really liked all the treats.

I mean, he'd go through a whole bag of carrots.

He sleeps in the sunroom.

He has an auto feeder twice a day and he roams the yard for the pomegranates, persimmons, nuts.

We've got so much fruit in the yard, figs.

He will live a very, very happy, fulfilled life here.

- You know, when I think about like, you guys had no idea, just kind of took on a life of its own.

The Hamilton persona just took on a life and you all kind of were hanging on and having fun doing really a lot of PR work.

- Yeah, I mean like for us it was like I enjoyed it because I got to sign an NHL contract with the Canes and living out that dream, but then like people were so excited and so happy to see him.

I always said, if we made one person smile, we did our job, so it was fun.

It makes me emotional.

[rhythmic jazzy bass music] - Yeah, this goat here with the light body and the dark head, we'd done a kudzu job for a guy and he was talking about that goat being way up the tree and it must have been 25 feet off the ground, a leaned-over tree and a goat had crawled up that thing to eat that kudzu.

- Do goats normally climb trees like that?

- No, I don't know, that's a rare one.

[goats bleating] - When Ron told me that we were going into the goat business, I said, "You are nuts."

[laughing] [playful acoustic guitar music] Hi, guys.

I'm Cheryl.

- And I'm Ron Searcy.

And our home is in Horse Shoe, North Carolina.

[playful music continues] That's a nice-looking mare, that red and white.

- [Cheryl] That's one of my favorites.

- It's a big winner.

- I like that little brown one.

- Yeah.

People ask me, I say, "Well, we rent goats."

"Do what?

Rent goats, for what?"

I said, "For weed control."

The federal government made an estimate a few years back that there's 7 1/2 million acres in the United States that's unusable because of kudzu.

We've specialized in taking them in the areas that are difficult with machinery and manpower, places that are kind of steep and hazardous.

Yeah, she's a good goat.

That's her kid right there, that brown-headed one.

- They seem like they like to be in a group.

They don't like to- - Yeah, they're a herd animal.

If a goat's in there by themselves, they'll get really panicky.

When you go to a kudzu area, they just annihilate it.

It goes from head high to the ground and everybody's just, "Wow."

They just can't believe it.

- [Cheryl] I mean they have it made.

They get to eat.

- They just love to eat.

- They do, they love to eat.

[upbeat acoustic music] [dog barking] - [Ron] Up in the morning, we'll have a few goats to feed.

- Get it ready to go out.

[liquid sloshing] I always let Ron put the nipple on 'cause they're hard.

And that's our third bottle.

We're ready to go feed.

- [Ron] We had tried a little bit of everything from tobacco to row crops.

We dabbled a little bit with cattle.

- [Cheryl] This farm was bought by my grandparents in '38.

[upbeat acoustic music continues] [goats bleating] We have about 250 adult goats.

The babies, they're kind of increasing by the day, so that usually will bring us up to around 300.

- We had moved back to the farm here and it was kind of overgrown and a little outta hand and the guy said, you know, he said, "You need to get you a gang of goats."

He said, "You wouldn't believe what they can do."

And that's kind of how we started.

We started with a few and then a few more and then we bought a billy and next thing you know, our son said, "It's dad's hobby that's gone wild."

[upbeat music] - Oh, my goodness.

- Takes your fingers.

- So cute, watch my fingers.

- There's a lot of maintenance.

People think we can take a group of goats and just put 'em out.

That's further from the truth it can be.

The guy that helps us now, his name is Jake Dorner and he's worked and helped us for about six years now.

- When you take those goats somewhere and then you come back to see what they've done, what is that like for you to see?

- We do like a dividing fence on some jobs and you can see the 10' high kudzu on one side and then dirt on the other and it's only been a couple weeks.

- The wilder and rougher it is, it seems like more they like it.

They leave no leaf unturned inside that fence.

- Do you really get emotionally invested with these goats?

- You do as much as you don't want to.

You know, you try to keep it separate.

This is a business, this is what we do, but it's hard 'cause they all have a cute personality, and then every once in a while, you know, you have one that's just real stubborn and that's okay too.

We all have that streak.

[laughing] [goat bleating] - [Heather] There a lot of goat humor that goes along with- - [Ron] No, I haven't.

- Like you've gotta be kidding me.

No butts about it.

No, not really, okay.

- No, I haven't heard anything like that, or very little.

[upbeat music] [hooves clonking] The first thing we have to do is go in and get fencing built, so we'll have to go in and clear and cut fence line and then we get everything ready for 'em then we'll bring the ghosts back in.

[upbeat music continues] This is the Crowders Mountain State Park located in Kings Mountain.

This is the only track in the whole state park that's got kudzu on it and they'd like to get control of it before it, I guess, gets outta hand, gets the rest of the park.

It'll completely consume areas.

I mean, if you stop long enough, I believe it'll grow up your pants leg.

- How long will it take you guys to kinda get the goats into place?

How long does it take usually?

- If it's a conventional place that we can back up to, we're probably there and gone in an hour, but this is a little unique where we've got to kind of shuttle 'em in.

[upbeat music continues] There's 50 plus goats in here.

This will take about two weeks, 2 1/2 weeks.

[metal rattling] For the first few days, they won't eat long before they're lay down because there's just so much here.

And as time goes on, the vegetation will get less.

They'll have to work longer and longer to get full.

It makes me feel good because, I mean, it really gives me a lot of pride when somebody says, "I never seen nothing like it."

[goats bleating] [upbeat music] - [Heather] Next time on "My Home," it's the food show.

Join us from the mountains to the coast as we dig into some of North Carolina's favorite foods and the inspiring stories behind the chefs and the foods that connect us all.

- I believe that I was blessed to have a lot of good cooks in the family.

- Food is love.

Think about your earliest memories surrounding food.

It was probably during a very memorable time with someone you love.

There's a level of passion and love that goes into whatever you're making.

It's just human nature, right?

- It feels very community-oriented in the restaurant industry especially.

We're very close.

There's just an excellent community of people who support each other.

- [Heather] It's all on "My Home."

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