Pets For Keeps

Published on Wednesday, March 20th, 2019

Over the years, Dick had hundreds of pets of all different sorts.

From budgerigars to mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, rats, tortoises, cats and dogs and many more. He also had lots of farm animals during his twenty years as a farmer, and these included cows, goats, hens, ducks, pheasants and of course, pigs!

As most of us know, it’s not just humans that have a personality. Animals have them too! From these characters, Dick took lots of inspiration to write his stories (adding some embellishments, and of course, having them speak the Queen’s English!)

Here are a few pictures of some of the animals Dick had over the years. Above is one of his favourites, a terrier called Susie that he had in the 1940’s.

Here we see Dick with French Lop rabbit Frank and Dachshund Dodo, both of whom starred in many television shows with him in the 1980’s.

       

Pictured below are Dick and his favourite boar Monty. Monty loved being scratched on his flanks, and would sink to the ground in ecstasy when Dick did this.

This last one is not strictly a pet, but an orphaned badger called Wilhelmina who fell down a cattle grid and was abandoned by her mother during the 1950’s. Dick’s brother Tony (pictured) rescued her and brought her up with the family dogs. Having been raised with dogs, Wilhelmina felt like one of the pack, and all of them delighted in chasing each other round the garden…

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