Animation clips not staying with Character

When I begin to animate my newly rigged character, doing all the proper steps. Say you finish animating what you want, then you need to remove the Character from the scene and Hierarchy which is okay because before they were dragged into the Project view as a game object to be re used. If I remove the Character (which can be treated like a game object) then later add them back into the scene to animate again all my previous clips for this character don't exist, when they should of stayed with this character...

I have animated similar characters within the same project and none have had this problem...

Help?