removing a pkg from pkg database without deleting the pkg itself

Hi,

I'd like to remove a pkg entry from the database so it's not managed by pkg.
Can't see a way to do this via pkg-delete(8)

The reason for doing this is because this pkg has its own ecosystem and i'd like it
to manage the pkg, get updates and so on.

One way around it would be to move the installation to a temp dir then deleting the 
pkg then moving it back. I just wondered if there's a better way?

context: 
% pkg -v
1.17.5

FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT #0 main-n254097-388c12e3f4a arm64.aarch64

thanks
-- 
J.