HAGRID - Arrived 9th December 2001
	Hagrid, who is about two months old, was found lying in a ditch by the roadside near Tankerness. He is a very large pup as he weighed 43kg and had obviously been coping very well in the wild catching fish for himself since he separated from his mother at about 3 weeks old. However, he managed to get himself into a fight with another seal and sustained a nasty bite to his nose. This must have scared him into going ashore, once out of site of the sea he got disorientated. Instead of heading back to the sea, he headed further inland; eventually being found 1 ½ miles from the sea!
Hagrid is continuing to be fed fish, as this is what he would be feeding on in the wild. Each day we clean out his wound and apply an antiseptic spray. He is also receiving daily antibiotic injections to combat any infections he may have got in his wound. UPDATE 2-3-2002
Although a very large pup, staff here at the sanctuary soon found out that he was a bit of a softie. During his first few days here he had to undergo daily sessions of cleaning and treating the wound on his nose. While most grey seals would seriously object to being jumped on and held tightly while having treatments applied, Hagrid was very calm and stayed very still while we worked on him. The wound to his nose caused a lot of swelling, this meant that for the first month he could not feed very well, he could only take very small bits of fish, however as soon as the swelling had reduced he managed to start taking whole fish again. Once we were happy that his nose was sufficiently healed we moved Hagrid outside, where he has continued to gain weight, he now weighs well over his target release weight, and we are just waiting for his nose to completely heal before he is released. UPDATE 27-5-2002
	Although Hagrid´s nose took a long time to heal and he was piling on the weight we didn´t want to release him until his nose was completely healed. Now completely healed Hagrid still shows his battle scars and the scarring has actually affected his right nostril. As you can see in his picture, one nostril is now sealed completely shut, but he seems perfectly happy and it isn´t affecting his breathing or his ability to hold his breath underwater. Hagrid was released on the 26th of March weighing a massive 65 kg. On arrival at the release site Hagrid immediately shot into the water and headed off into the distance, where he was last seen approaching 3 grey seals from a nearby colony who had come to see what was going on.
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