The British Otter Rex owes it's pedigree to Jock Hardwick of whom many of you will have heard mentioned. Jock's primary motivation was in the challenge of breeding exhibition rabbits, and from an early age he was aware that many years of "silent" breeding would be required to achieve the targets he set himself. He first took on the chin gigantas and in his own words "wanted not just to win the breed classes, but also to take best fur and best in show". This took him the best part of six years but his patience was undoubtedly rewarded by the many top awards he received.

His next project was to tackle the orange rex, with a view to improve type, coat, colour and size which he also achieved over the coming years.

During his time with the rex rabbit ,he was offered the chance of importing a rare rex breed from France, with Rene Bareham and Meg Brown liasing with the French breeder. This rare breed was of course, the otter rex. However the mated doe originally scheduled for import to Jock failed to materialise owing to the sudden illness of the French breeder. Not to be detered Jock later made arangements for Rene and Meg to bring a different mated doe back from the Paris exhibition. Jock himself was somewhat disappointed with this mystery animal, which he had only been able to imagine what it looked like by reading breed standard descriptions.It was only a youngster,and Jock didn't really consider it old enough to be bred from and his judgement proved correct as the doe was not in kindle, so Jock set about drawing up a breeding program for the following spring. Firstly, he mated it to a castor to be sure of it's breding potential,and when this proved worthy he made arrangements to have a buck imported from the same source. It is at this time that Jocks' dedication and determination was tested to the full .Just as the final arrangements were being finalised, the Ministry of Agriculture ammended ther livestock importation restiction categories to include rabbits and cavies, judging them to be potential carriers of rabies. Jock then found himself without a mate for his otter doe. This was an irresistable challenge, and he began an attempt to create a mate from other rex varieties. Several experimental matings were made, using black rex, normal tan and a cross between them given to him by a fellow rabbit keeper. An orange rex was introduced somewhere along the line to improve belly colour. Jock has never maintained that there was any particular method in his madness, and that lady luck was certainly on his side. After three years and with the help of his friend Mike Astell, he was able to produce an otter far better than the original doe, much to the amazement of Rene and Meg who saw it at the London show. The story doesn't end here, as this quality animal was a doe!!!

Eventually a suitable otter buck was bred which when mated to the original otter doe produced all otter progeny, and continued to do so with the exeption of a self black in one of the early litters.

Many years of dedicated breeding from selected otters produced a line that began to attract interest at shows in 1974, which is remembered as the year of which the otter rex began to take of in this country.

Many years have since passed, and the otter has seen it's popularity rise. Atempts to further improve on Jock's original line have been made with varied success, resulting in the creating of the chocolate, blue and lilac colours and quite recently the beautiful satin otter rex, and the mini rex in all colours has been produced and exhibited. I am sure if Jock was alive today he would surely be proud of his otter rex - we all owe him a great deal of gratitude.