I wish you would explain to my rabbits how that works; my experience for the last 30-odd years has been different. Bucks living that long, absolutely, but an 8-year-old doe of any breed has been a rarity for me.
If you believe this, you haven't met a really nasty rabbit. I have had a few (very few) ND bucks that would lunge at the front of the cage whenever a person went past - anybody who put a hand in that cage was risking getting severely bitten. I had a friend who had rabbits loose in her yard who got attacked by a Netherland Dwarf buck when she was just walking by, and have heard more stories than I can count of children being bitten so severely by a pet rabbit, the animal clamped on and was literally hanging off of the child's hand (these stories were told to me first-person or by their parents). When the ARBA finally made it a rule that a judge could put a rabbit off the table for being vicious, I applauded that decision; no longer would judges have to risk getting chewed on just to judge a class. I will tolerate a certain amount of territorial/hormonal behavior from an adolescent, but if the rabbit continues with it, that animal will have voted themselves out of the gene pool, regardless of how typey they are. The last thing I want to do is put a cranky rabbit into the hands of a child and have them permanently scarred, physically and psychologically. I have known people who have rabbitries full of fall-out-in-your-arms friendly rabbits who have lots of GC's among them; to me, this is proof that there is no need to put up with grumpy personalities simply because you are showing.
The OP is talking about getting rabbits as pets; a pet that merely tolerates you isn't a whole lot of fun. A mutt that clearly enjoys interacting with you is a much nicer pet than a purebred that clearly would rather be left alone.
