Walkers on the Downs may do a double-take when they spot Steve Edgington out with his pet.

As he sets off for his daily walk across the hills, it is not a dog at the end of the lead but his fox, Snookums.

Steve treats Snookums, known affectionately as Miss Snook, as he would any pet.

He and wife Nola feed and play with the young fox, let her sleep in their Ditchling home and provide her with a litter tray.

She even watches TV and curls up with her adoptive family on the sofa.

When the Edgingtons finish work in the shops they own in Hassocks, they slip a lead on to Miss Snook's collar and take her for a walk across the nearby fields.

Steve, 52, said: "She's absolutely gorgeous and the perfect pet. She suits me because I'm a bit of a workaholic. I'm in the shop seven days a week and she sleeps when I'm at work.

"Miss Snook usually wakes up in the morning and we have a play, chasing each other round the room. Then she sleeps during the day.

"At dusk we go up to the foot of the Downs. She plays, digs things up and does all the things she would in the wild.

"I don't want to deprive her. She loves to run through the grass and chase things. She has never been a fox as such, she's just our girl."

Steve, who owns the Hassocks Pet Centre, became Miss Snook's foster father when she was found abandoned as a four-day-old orphan on a footpath at Keymer Church.

A friend called thinking she had found a puppy but Steve realised it was a baby fox.

After trying to locate the parents, he took the fox home and she was bottle-fed until she became stronger.

A year and three months later, she has grown into a shy but contented fox.

Steve said: "She can't go back into the wild now. We walk her on a 26ft flexible lead with a collar and she's quite happy.

"On the rare times the lead has come off, she has just sat down and refused to move.

"When my wife comes with me, Miss Snook insists on walking between us."

Steve, who once owned the toucan used in the Guinness adverts in the Eighties, added: "Foxes are such beautiful creatures. The things people make up about them aren't true - if you pick up a children's book foxes are always the villain and youngsters grow up believing that.

"But they are not evil. They are basically just lazy creatures - if they are fed they don't go around killing chickens."