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It was perfectly clear from day one that my life was going to be dominated by animals of one sort or another.
I was given a fluffy rabbit on the day I was born and within one week of my entrance in to this world, a small bowl with some gold fish was placed in my room.
Whilst we lived in Amsterdam, it was difficult to keep animals, as we lived on the third floor of a block of flats. But even there I managed to keep some budgerigars.
I was 13 when we moved to Amstelveen (a more residential town between Amsterdam and the airport Schiphol), where we occupied a semi-detached house with a front and back garden, but more importantly it included a brick built shed.
This was surely a place where I was going to be able to keep some livestock of one sort of another.
The first choice was rabbits. Initially, like many people I suppose, I just wanted one pet rabbit. The pet rabbit turned out to be a purebred Chinchilla Gigantes doe, though -so, as it was a purebred it had to be shown and at a later stage "bred from".
Thus started my "carreer" as a person that kept, bred and showed small livestock.
I bred and showed my rabbits from 1968 to 2000: Chinchilla Gigantes first, to be followed by Tans, Thuringers and then, after their invention: German Lops.
The German Lops, in retrospect, gave me the most fun. I had always liked lop-eared rabbits, but the Frenchies were to large for a girl of 13 - 14 to handle and the Dwarf Lops were too small for my liking.
So, ..... when the German Lop was invented (a cross between a Frenchie and Dwarf Lop -making it a medium sized rabbit in a weight range of 2.5kg to 3.5kg -I just had to have this breed.
It originated in Germany -I obviously had to go there to aquire my foundation stock. And so I did -in 1979 I travelled to the Hannover show and bought a matching pair.
One year later, I added a pair from Frans Ladenstein
In 1987, I moved from Holland to England. Despite the quarantaine laws in those years, I managed to bring in my dog as well as 2 pairs of German Lops into quarantaine near Dover.
Helvetia Stud was founded in Holland in 1976.
Whilst this stud is now probably primarily known for its Self Chocolates, the first breeds kept and shown back then were Self Blacks and PE Whites plus their English Crested counterparts.
Many wins have been clocked up over the past three decades on Dutch and English soil, as well as across Europe at various European shows.
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