Posh by Name, Posh by Nature ...

 This is the beautiful Posh. She was hand raised by Narelle from a teeny, tiny baby and has the sweetest nature ever .... in fact, she is a little too sweet. You see Posh decided that she didn't need to put her 'wild hog' hat on so her Mamma banished her to Herd Boot Camp.

Posh arrived on the 21st of December 2013 and immediately went about stealing my heart. She was just SO amenable and friendly you could pick her her and she'd just relax in your hands and serenely look around at the scenery. Narelle had literally been ignoring her for months in an effort to get her to wild up as withdrawing all contact - as much as is practicable, usually does the trick and the hoggie becomes very antisocial and wild.

Posh's pre release pen.

After spending about three weeks in her hutch being as ignored as was humanly possible, Posh still set out the welcome mat whenever she saw or heard me and I decided I needed to up the anti.

As I was only 3 1/2 weeks post op, the solution had to be quick, simple and easy to implement so after pondering for a day or two, I grabbed a cheap dog exercise pen off TradeMe and set up a long pen against the house in what would ultimately become Sonny's Sanctuary.

I made Posh a bedroom box and in she went in the hope that spending time on the ground out of the comfort of her hutch would help her get the message.

Posh's pre release bedroom box

Once every 7-10 days I got Posh out to check her well being and to weigh her but there was no change in her attitude - in fact she was thrilled to see me each time. It was exasperating to say the least.

In mid February I  thought Posh had had a huge break though as suddenly her food intake went up (she'd been on a hunger strike on and off since she arrived), there were signs of digging in the pen, and there was quite a lot of noise at night. This 'improvement' went on for about 10 days until one night the racket was incredible ...hmmm..

I grabbed a torch and snuck my head out the window to see if I could see what on earth Posh was up to. A hoggie shot past, through the torch beam and into the feeder box that I had in the pen to 'teach' Posh about using before she was released.

Hang on .....

That's NOT Posh ....

I zoomed outside (this was the middle of the darned night I might add...) to investigate. Posh was firmly wedged between her bedroom box and the feeder box. Ok, so ....  what on earth is going on? I opened the feeder box and a little hoggie face looked up at me before 'hiding' LOL. Incredulously I scooped the little one out, shut the pen back up and took the hoggie inside to have a look. It was a wee female, about 500gms and in perfect health. she was gorgeous and there was no reason to do anything other than give her a dose of Advocate and then set her free in my wild hog feeder box. The cheeky little monkey must have squeezed into the pen about two weeks prior; when she was a lot smaller, after sniffing out Posh's food. The increase in the volume of food being eaten in those two weeks certainly explains why she quickly grew too big to get back out - piggy oink oink, and the ruckus was probably Posh yelling at me to get the pesky kid out of her pen!!

What you looking at huh??? !

Another few weeks passed and Posh wasn't making any more progress so I made the hard decision to release her so that she could at least have a chance at leading a wild life. Staying in captivity simply wasn't an option as she was already depressed and desperately needed to go. In order to give Posh the very best chance at surviving,  I decided to delay releasing Sonny into the orchard for a week or so - instead I moved her into Posh's old pre release pen which I extended. Then I released Posh into the orchard as the first stage her 'soft release'.  On March 19th, I moved her into the garden in her bedroom box and with her feeder box. She stayed in the garden for four nights and then left.

Goodbye Posh - Have a wonderful life. Come and visit us some time!