A trip down Animal Memory Lane

Hi all 

After my post for my Moving along with the Times this last week it set me off thinking about my pets over the years and over on our DT blog we've been sharing photos and stories and I have so enjoyed it - so decided to share here too.  if you're an animal lover you might enjoy my trip down memory lane - if not just switch off now!!!

I went off looking through our boxes of old photos after I persuaded my DH to get them out of the loft.  I didn't find them all -you'll be glad to hear!  -but it kept us all amused this cold rainy weekend and gave me these old and not so old photos to share with you here.....

Me and Kim

Kim - my first dog that I had from about the age of 7 and she lived until she was 15, (I think I was about 10 in this photo) she was from a litter of puppies my Grandma's dog had - my Mam said she knew that we'd end up with one -  and we did!! - We'd had a black and white cat (Cookie) before that who just disappeared one day - the way cats do, I know I've got a couple of photos but  didn't come across them.  While I was young my Dad also used to breed budgies - think that's where I got the animal gene!!

Next came Sunny the dog we got shortly after we got married, she was a border collie cross - more cross than border collie!! We had her for 13 years - she had that awful trip to the vet just weeks after my youngest son was born.

Sunny

We had a break of a couple of years with no dog but we had budgies (Peter and Wendy) and guinea pigs.   We had 3 guinea pigs, who were brothers they were long haired shelties like little yorkshire terriers - I used to have to bath them and cut their hair! 

They were called Badger, Cuddles and Tiny.  This picture is of my son Matthew with Badger.  We had them for about 5 or 6 years

Matthew and Badger

It really kicked off  when we got our first Labrador Heidi
She was a lovely gentle dog - if not a bit nuts!!
We had her for almost 14 years

Heidi aged around 2

At the same time we got our brown tabby Persian Toby 

- the most beautiful cat of all

(terrible photo I know)

and terrible carpet - it came with the house!!

Toby

he was closely followed by Jack the ginger mog

and the British Shorthairs that I bred and showed 

We had a lilac colour point Lucy

Jack and Lucy

Lucy was a lovely cat but suffered from progressive retinal atrophy and went blind before she was 3

She couldn't cope in a multi cat house so she went to live with a  friend of mine and lived happily until just a couple of years ago.  I never bred from her and was so glad because the condition was hereditary - but I would have loved colourpoint kittens.

Toby and Lucy

Lucy as a kitten

Matthew with Jack - out of my 3 kids he is the one who loved the animals most

We bred mainly British silver tipped and my breeding queen was  Rosie

Rosie
She was mum to my lovely Barney and his sister Annie
who we also kept

Barney,Annie and their brother Casper aged around 8 weeks

We also had a British blue Tilly and had a couple of litters of British blues from which we had
Chandler our gorgeous boy - I couldn't find most of my photos - so he's not pictured here I'm sad to say he was a lovely chunky boy.

Tilly

I only ever had 2 litters of kittens in a year and even that was only once.  We had such fun when the kids were little and made some lovely friends and had quite a lot of success in the cat shows. - many people came back and bought another kitten - they were very well brought up kittens with lovely natures.  - but so hard work and cost a fortune - there was never a profit made out of breeding cats in our house!!
Our other British Shorthair male Bailey who was the youngest of the cats became Grand champion - he was an enormous cat over 16 pounds in his prime

Bailley

After our Labrador Heidi died we got Glenn who is now 4
here he is just a few weeks ago in his Christmas bandana





So now we're down to a one pet household - very quiet compared to our busy animal years - but its right for us now, we like to go on holiday too much - and thats the choice I've had to make

I've enjoyed my trip down animal memory lane!  - seeing all my beautiful boys and girls again was a lovely way to spend an afternoon -most of these photographs are pre digital so the quality is not that good - don't we just take technology for granted these days!!

Congratulations if you made it this far lol

hugs Judith xx