Our daughter, born in 1968 had both rabbits and guinea pigs. She had a caring nature, her elder brothers weren't interested.
Her first rabbit Benji, when she was six, lived in a sturdy hutch with a sleeping compartment on a stand on the patio She was allowed to have the rabbit if she promised to clean out its hutch and feed it every morning which she did.
Here she is in next door's garden around that age.
It had a sheet of heavy duty polythene anchored to the roof by a brick, that could be folded down at night to protect him from the rain if he was daft enough to be out of his sleeping compartment in bad weather. But the wind could blow it up so there was no protection.
Every night my wife would say to me whatever the weather before we went to bed. "Can you go outside and just check Benji's flap's down?
Sometimes it wasn't when it was raining and the rabbit was daft enough to be out of his sleeping compartment. It might have been because he heard me coming out, or it could just be he couldn't be assed, after all he was a rabbit.
I got sick of this so a year later I built this and stuck it on the back of the garage. I built it from re-claimed soft wood roofing ply and three of next door's wooden windows which were being skipped when they had double glazing put in.
It had two lines of cages up on long benches I built, with a central gangway.
We still call it "The Rabbit Shed" but it houses my gardening tools now.
Over the years the number of rabbits increased and guinea pigs were added. All the sexes separated so "no funny business," She bought the last when she was fourteen. Over the years they passed away, so she was down to the last when she left home to go to Great Ormond Street to train to be a paediatric nurse at 18.
The last rabbit lived for another eight years after she left, apart from a few visits each year. Muggins here had to look after it.
So it was 26 when it died, just before we went down to see her and her partner in their new house in Staines. My wife was concerned that she might be upset about it dying, but all she said when I told her was "Ahh! Shame!" and changed the subject. My wife didn't appreciate that in her job at GO, S the survival rate of kids is about 50% so she'd witnessed a lot of death in her time.
They've four kids of their own now, aged 7,11,17,22. All planed and the births neatly spread out. They did have a couple of cats when the eldest two were young, but both those died over ten years ago.
Here she is this year on a visit at 51, a "high maintenance mum," still the same size, with her eldest. Both tall, blonde with "legs up to here." So no pets at all now, all have far too busy lives for them. I guess it's a generation thing.
This is how I have raised and managed my dogs for years. Decades, actually.
