No animations when starting too close to actor

I have pigs in my game which don't have any attacks so their Animator consist of entry->blendTree and anyState->death (on trigger). So basically the pig is always in the blend tree which is just 1d: Speed, that goes from idle <-> walk <-> run. So there should always be idle, walk, or run, playing, unless the pig is dead which is pretty obvious when it's dead (it's not dead).

Now I've been working on some new player skills and testing them on pigs, so I've saved right next to a pig so that when I load the game I'm right next to a pig and ready to test my skill changes on him. However the pig doesn't animate. I can see his animator is on, he is on, he is rendering... but he's not animating. If I put about 2m distance between us, he starts animating, and doesn't stop if I get close again. If I save about 2m from him and reload, he animates as normal... stand next to him and reload again.. not animating again...

Does this make sense in any way? I'm using cull animations completely, but the pig is quite obviously visible. What else can I look into to figure this out?