After moving to Spain in 2004 and struggling to learn Spanish, I thought if I volunteered at my local dog shelter it would improve my Spanish. Only to find out the shelter was run by Brits and Dutch ladies!

I spent a happy couple of years shovelling poo and playing with the dogs once a week which then crept to twice a week and fostering the odd dog along the way.

Suddenly I’m fostering mainly Podencos and the then shelter manager, Valerie, had the foresight to start pushing Podencos and Galgos for rehoming in the UK. In the good old days, it was done through chatting on forums,  Facebook was yet to be created!

Hence, Ibizan Hound Rescue was born; people had never heard of the Podenco breed so it was never considered as part of the charity name.

When Valerie returned to the UK, the charity spread its wings and we went solo in Spain, rescuing mainly Podencos and gave our home over to the dogs!

Almost all of our dogs live in the house with us, it gets a bit hectic at times! Valerie got the boring bit of chatting to people, emailing and home checking our potential adoptees. Admin is not my strong point.

Time and our cause progressed. Along with acquiring charity status, our home is now classed as a shelter complete with quarantine kennels for new dogs. After the quarantine period, we all live together in the house, which causes raised eye brows and smiles when we get inspected!

Ibizan Hound Rescue is now 16 years young and going strong now with Nina in the UK doing a tremendous job of sorting all our homing which is normally straight to new families. Loads of checking and chatting is required (we would be lost without her). We are grateful to friends/rescues in Canada, U.S., Czech Republic, Sweden and Denmark — all homing our dogs to loving homes.

​xxx Diane (I still cannot speak Spanish… lol)