It was a neighbour’s dog that brought the hare into our lives. We used to take the bouncy labrador for walks around our village in Cambridgeshire. On one such occasion, the dog darted forward, picked up something small and returned with it held softly in her jaws. It was a leveret, now covered with the scent of canine saliva. We were told that this would scare off the mother when she was doing the rounds of offspring she had left at various spots in the fields. No longer the hare of the dog, the leveret became our responsibility.
We called her Flossy, after a great-aunt. We fed her on greenery, brushed her fur, held her on our knees and tickled between her ears. She licked our hands. We were known as “the family with the hare”. She was pretty nervous, but if we waved our fingers under her nose, she would happily attack them with her front paws, like a boxer.
