Mum-of-two has FOX as household pet after hand-rearing cub and letting him play with her children

He gets walked on a lead, plays with his owner’s children and is a fully-fledged household pet.

But Jasper isn’t a dog – he’s a fox who has been hand-reared by mum-of-two Natalie Reynolds, who keeps the eight month old with her three dogs, cat and horses at their home.

The stay-at-home mum admits getting “strange looks” from dog-walkers when she walks Jasper near her village in Hertfordshire – which was once popular with fox hunters!

But despite Natalie insisting Jasper is domesticated, she has admitted he has a tendency to nip strangers as an animal charity argued that keeping the wild animals as pets is wrong.

Natalie, whose son Chace, 3, and Marissa, 5, play with Jasper in their back garden, said: “They get such bad press but he’s around my children and he just plays with them. He’s got a different bond with me. He’s not so great with my partner.

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“He’s like a cross between a cat and a dog. He’s part of the pack. The dogs chase him around, he loves the cat but the cat isn’t too fond of him.

“I always walk him on the lead – he’s so domesticated. A lot of people look down their noses at you. Some people are disgusted but most people are good about it.”

The family adopted Jasper from a veterinary surgery in another village in Hertfordshire when he was two days old. He had been handed in after being abandoned by his mother and was mistaken for a tiny puppy.

Natalie spent the first few weeks hand-rearing the cub, who needed bottle-feeding every couple of hours, keeping him in a crate like a puppy.

She said: “Around four months old we built him an outdoor enclosure which suited him very much better because he was just going around the house causing a lot of mischief. He’s got freedom as in he runs around free in the garden, he’s not caged.

“He’s only in there for night-time and for his own safety so it’s not like I’m just keeping him captive in a cage.

“He does have his sense of freedom and we do go on walks and things. People are always going to judge no matter what you do.”

Jasper’s own enclosure has wooden shelves and bedding and he regularly plays with her young children on a trampoline in the garden during the day.

But despite her love of her ‘pet’, Natalie said she would never recommend anyone else keep a fox.

“We’re very fortunate that we have the stuff to keep him here but it’s not something I would advise in any way,” she added.

“I don’t want people to go out and think ‘this is great’. He’s not good in a domestic situation, he smells. They are just not a household pet.”

Martin Brookes, of Vale Wildlife Hospital, said there was a growing trend of keeping wild foxes as pets.

Speaking of a pet fox that was handed into the charity hospital which was being “taught” to be wild again, he said: “When he first came out here he was literally running up to the care assistants climbing your legs. It’s not good for the fox, it’s no good for the species.”