Meet Bella, the adorable sheep who thinks she’s a dog

A sheep now thinks she’s a dog after growing up alongside family pets.

Baby Bella was taken into care by farmer’s wife Gilly Chippendale, after she was rejected first by her birth mother and then by several other ewes when she was a newborn lamb.

Gilly, who breeds Fell ponies, said: ‘We have over a thousand breeding sheep on the farm and there are always lambs who get rejected and often ewes who lose their own lamb, so the orphans get mothered onto them which they sometimes reject.

After growing up inside Gilly’s manor house in Cumbria – alongside the family’s seven dogs and one cat – Bella now doesn’t see herself as a sheep at all.

Instead she firmly believes she’s a canine.

In fact, she gets scared when fellow sheep approach her and will run away from the rest of the flock.

Gilly added: ‘Bella certainly doesn’t believe she’s a sheep. She’s never recognised herself as a sheep, she’s inquisitive but frightened of other sheep.

‘It’s very funny to see her walk past other sheep on our walks acting very aloof. She even runs away from sheep if they follow her.

‘I did once try to shut her in a field with other sheep but it had a footpath through it so she accosted all the walkers and ramblers, so they had to let her through the gate and then she’d come back up to the house.’

Bella can often be found camped on my doorstep waiting for someone to let her in the house and loves hanging out in the family’s hallways, kitchen, boot room and living room.