9. The Animal Rescue & Sanctuary begins…
The money we earned from the TV show kept us going for a while and we continued to work on the farm, clearing the massive amounts of old broom from around the house and getting a machine to come for a few hours to obliterate the huge hill of it that was at the side of the house. Using machines is great but they don’t really leave anything at all, everything is wiped out, I know it takes a lot longer but I prefer to do the cleaning work by hand, you get to see the layout of the land and all the different plants and baby trees that are growing.
Life in the caravan was challenging and with the 6 dogs sleeping with us, not so easy. It was so hot we had to keep the windows open and the flyscreens down, one night a big noise woke us up and I just saw a flash of black jumping through the window. We scrambled to find the light and counted the dogs and realised it was Sunny that was missing, she’d gone through the window. Leon ran out of the caravan and up the track in his pants calling her. I saw something go under the caravan and when I got the torch I realised it was Sunny munching on a chicken bone. I called Leon back, he was so stressed thinking she’d run off, she’d actually gone after a local cat that had been in our rubbish bag outside. The cat had dropped the chicken bone and Sunny picked it up and took it under the caravan to eat it in peace, she refused to come out until she’d finished it off. The same cat decided one night to come through our skylight in the early hours of the morning and land on our cooker. It was like a bomb went off in the caravan, the dogs went absolutely crazy and Leon and I woke up to the cat springing back up through the roof window with 6 dogs trying to jump up onto the cooker to catch it.
And our family got bigger….8 baby chicks arrived from our friends, we kept them in the shower room until we could make a proper place for them and it was too cold outside as they were only babies. The dogs were very curious with them but also really gentle although we didn’t leave them alone together. Now we were two adults, six dogs and eight chickens in a two berth caravan.
We started to work in the main house, all the walls were now back to their original stone and the floor was in desperate need to come down, it was so unsafe and there were holes everywhere. Leon worked non stop and took it all down, it was really weird standing at the bottom and looking all the way up to the roof. We would have to buy the materials in stages to restore the floor but at least now it was ready for us to do so.
One day while on Facebook, I saw a post with a little puppy tied up, he looked a little strange with an odd shaped face. A lady had picked him up off the road and was trying to find his owner but no one came forward and she needed to find him a home as she was unable to keep him, she had left him at the cafe close to where he was found. I showed him to Leon and he immediately said to send a message. We already had six but there was something about this little boy that pulled at our heart strings and we couldn’t leave him like he was. The lady messaged and said she would bring him to us that afternoon. I had already chosen the name Paco for him, little did we know then what a huge impact this very special boy would have on our life.
It was at this point that I started to think about starting an animal rescue. Both Leon and I couldn’t believe some of the dogs we were seeing on Facebook and the conditions that they were in. The UK has it’s problems with animal cruelty but I’ve never seen anything like I was seeing here in Portugal. We had been talking about turning the farm into some holiday accommodation. I started to think maybe we could combine the two. I spoke to Leon about it and told him this was something I really wanted to do. Part of living an alternative life is also thinking in an alternative way, it’s not about taking all you can from life, it’s also about giving. I was pretty sick of giving to humans after encountering so many assholes over the years but I would quite happily give all I have to help dogs and other animals in need.
Paco arrived at our farm that afternoon, he had stayed with the lady overnight and she brought him to us with her husband. They said they’d been watching him and he seemed a little odd, the husband thought something was wrong with him but they weren’t sure what. Leon had already been to the local supermarket and bought a cooked chicken for him to win him over, he totally devoured it and we took him into the cottage. We didn’t want to put him with our main pack until we were sure that he wasn’t sick, Leon moved into the cottage with him and slept on a mattress on the floor with him for the first ten days. I knew within a few hours there was something really wrong with him, he kept walking in circles, he didn’t make any eye contact with us and he wasn’t responding at all to any noises. I started to click my fingers near his ears and realised he was deaf, he only reacted to very loud bangs. We took him to the municipal vet a few days later to have him checked for a microchip and to make sure he was ok, he also had his first vaccinations, I’m not a lover of vaccinations and thought long and hard about him having them but finally went ahead with it. The vet confirmed he was partially deaf and gave him his first lot of jabs.
The other dogs didn’t really bother much with Paco, he was in a world of his own all the time. I started to use hand signals with him but it was a little pointless as his attention span was non-existent, he would always be looking off into the distance and going around in circles. One day while in the caravan he was asleep on the floor, Leon was doing some work at another farm for some people and the other dogs were in the cottage. I started to notice Paco twitching while on the floor, I thought he was dreaming at first. I realised it was more than a dream and went straight over to him, he started to convulse and I knew he was having a fit. I’ve never experienced a fit before so I wasn’t sure what to do apart from hold him and reassure him until it passed. He lost all control of himself and went to the toilet. It seemed to last forever but it was actually just over a minute however it was extremely violent. I had no way of contacting Leon so I just had to sit it out with Paco on the floor. When it was over he was totally disorientated, he kept falling over so I picked him up and put him on the sofa. It had been three days since his vaccination. He seemed tired but fine and was so hungry afterwards. When Leon came back I called the vet, he said it could be the vaccination and to just watch him. I did, like a hawk and two weeks later while he was laying next to me on the sofa in the caravan I could sense something coming and sure enough he started to have another seizure, this one was much milder and over in less than a minute. I called the vet again in the morning and he said it wasn’t unusual for dogs to have seizures, Paco was obviously special and it could be one of many things, we should watch him and see. There were no more seizures for another 8 months after this point.
One of our best friends decided to visit us just after Paco had arrived, Bev is someone I met when I had a bistro in Swansea, it was located next to the prison and Bev would come in for a drink after finishing work there. We instantly hit it off and have been friends ever since. When we got married Bev was put in charge of the alcohol, this was one of the best decisions of the day, it was a weekend none of us will forget easily. Bev was really concerned about what we were doing and the off grid life we had chosen to live, she was staying in the hotel in the town as we didn’t have anywhere for her to sleep and I’m not sure she’ll ever be a cold shower and digging a hole to go the toilet type of girl. She brought us so much stuff it was like Christmas, clothes, food, teabags, it was so kind of her and Leon and I were over the moon.
We showed her all around the farm and she helped me to build some more broom fencing, she also took us to the builders merchants and paid for the materials for our floor. She knew how short of money we were and wanted to do something to help, so she did. Her timing to come to Portugal wasn’t the best and the wildfires were raging all over the country, there were over 500 fires one day, Bev said her hotel looked like the gates of hell as the car park was full of smoke. We did some exploring while she visited as she had a hired car and by now Mandy was way over her date for being matriculated into Portugal so journeys were limited to local places and avoiding any GNR.
It was wonderful to see Bev and we were upset to see her leave but she promised to come back one day when we were more organised and I’m sure that day will eventually come. In the meantime we stay in touch via Facebook and she’s often posting about her travels around the UK in her very posh campervan with her husband and rescued Romanian dog. Leon had started to pick up bits of work on different farms, the work was really hard and the pay was awful but it was just enough to keep us going. I also started to write a blog of our adventures on wordpress but it was hard to stay on top of it with so many things going on daily. We now had all the materials for the floor, somehow we just had to install them all, there was only me and Leon so this wasn’t going to be easy.
Here’s a video of our life in the caravan at this time.
We underestimated how heavy the concrete beams or vigas as they are called in Portugal would be and it nearly killed us putting the first one in, we also nearly killed each other with the stress. There were many more to go and we didn’t know how we were going to do it. Leon was out at work one day and I was in the caravan with the dogs. I heard some distant frantic beeping from a car, I went out to see what was going on, hearing anything was unusual and this noise was definitely signalling something wasn’t right. My first thoughts were that something had happened to Leon as he was working on big machines and I was worried sick about him or that it might be a wildfire. I saw a lady in a truck and she jumped out and ran towards me shouting help! I couldn’t understand her but she was signalling in the distance, she was wet and there was a little blood on her face. I went back to the caravan and moved all the dogs quickly into the house and the cottage and then jumped in her car with her. I had no idea what the problem was, only that she needed some help. We drove down the track and up the hill a little that we could see from our house, she parked the truck up and gestured for me to follow her. We seemed to run for miles over fields, through hedges and then we reached a well, she just jumped down into it. I thought to myself there’s no way in hell I’m jumping down a well, I’m not the best swimmer in the world by any stretch of the imagination.
I went over to the top of the well and I could see her dragging a sheep out of the water, I then realised this was the shepherd lady we’d been seeing from afar and one of her sheep was in trouble. I told her to calm down and to wait. I got some big logs and pulled them a little over the well wall so I had something to brace myself against. I had no idea if I was going to be able to pull this sheep out but I also knew that all my strength would be in the first attempt, after that I would be weaker so it was going to be all or nothing. I leant over as far as I could while pushing against the log and managed to get two hands onto the sheep she was trying to lift up. I grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and got the other hand on it’s behind. I counted to three and then heaved with all of my might, two seconds later the soaking wet black sheep and myself were laying on the grass looking up to the sky. I don’t know how I managed to pull it out but I did, I then heard a little voice say ‘and me’ I realised the lady was still down the well, I again braced myself and took her hand and pulled her out too.
She was so grateful and I think the sheep probably was too, the poor thing was exhausted and just lay on the grass, I helped her put the sheep in the truck and walked back to our farm in a little bit of shock. Portugal was certainly turning out to be an interesting experience and that was definitely an experience I wasn’t expecting. I got back to the farm and waited for Leon to come home to tell him what had happened. A little later that evening we saw the ladies truck come back down our track, she came to thank me and brought me a huge bottle of wine and another of olive oil. Her husband was also with her and he spoke a little English, they told us they were sheep farmers and lived just over the mountain and if there was anything they could do to help us in return to just ask. Leon and I looked at each other and took them into the house to show them the viga’s we were struggling with. The husband said no problem and that he would come back the next day with some scaffolding and they would help us to lift them up. They came the next day with a truck full of scaffolding and over the next few days helped us to lift the remaining viga’s into place.
They were a nice couple and the husband told Leon he could get him some work, we started to socialise with them a little and went over to their house a few times for some food or a drink. They didn’t understand our life with the dogs, to them dogs were just used for farm work and as much as I liked them I didn’t like how they treated their dogs. One of their dogs passed away during childbirth, they wouldn’t call the vet as they said they couldn’t afford it and the other dog died from an infection, this one was kept chained up in an old oil drum. I tried to speak to them about changing the way the dog was kept but it died before anything could be done. You sometimes think people are your friends until money comes into it and then everything changes. We learnt a horrible and hard lesson with this couple, a story for the next blog…..
Please leave us a comment with your thoughts on our blog, we’d like to know what you think :-)
Many people have expressed an interest in helping us so if you would like to support our project then you can make a one time donation or even support us monthly using Ko-fi. All help is gratefully recieved, we have a lot of money to save to finish paying for the farm and the expenses for the dogs are never ending…Thank you :-) Please click the Ko-fi image below to be taken to our page. If you prefer to use paypal then you can send a donation to chris1212preedy@gmail.com
You can also support us by subscribing to medium using the link below, Medium kindly give us a commission for everyone who signs up. :-)
