2007 is ending and 2008 begins. It’s time to review what happened throughout the year, and also the time to set the strategies and especially the wishes for next year. Personally I believe it’s always desirable that things go a bit better, or at least that things stay the way they are right now, which sometimes is better, but on the animal point of view, we always wish things will get better. Although summing up, many new things have been done in the shelter: the security double fence, we’ve painted the shelter, we’ve put shades in some patios. We still have to do some other things, but we’ve started with the procedures to have an education centre in the shelter, a personal bet as a teacher. I still believe in education, even if sometimes I despair. As for rescues, the year began emptying the Laguna shelter, we brought more than 100 dogs.

About the middle of the year, we had the Matapozuelos zoo closing their doors, and even when we didn’t bring dogs from there, we rescued more than 50 animals among sheep, goats, calves, and birds. To finish off the year, we had the El Cuervo problem where, for the time being, we have rescued more than 80 dogs, most of them in terrible conditions. From the Valladolid pound we did a couple of rescues this year, saving from death more than 60 dogs. All this without taking into account the rescues that we did with the trap cage and dogs from other provinces, for we are called because we are well known for the good care we give to our animals, together with the usual rescues in the area. We still haven’t got the final numbers, but I’m sure that we’ll exceed the 700; we’ll let you know further on.

This year we have also started doing the trips to Europe on our own, some of them a bit complicated, but over all everything went on very well. Most of the animals we’ve rescued have found a place in your hearts and some are still here, waiting their turn, which we hope will come next year.

In 2007 we also had two of our dogs visiting many schools from the province, in a program financed by the County Council, which was useful for people to get to know us, and to promote animal welfare among the youngsters.

We took part in two walks with Galgos, one in Gijon and another one in Fuente de Piedra, both organized by SOS Galgos. They were both a success and we thank the organizers for their invitation. We hope we’ll organize them next year.

For next year we hope to finish building our Education Centre and start with receiving the visits from the schools. We’ve planned a farm visit, for which we’ll put some wooden fences, safer for the visitors.

We’ll keep on adding shades for our dogs. In fact, we have ordered several more thanks to the Affinity Foundation, who has subsidized this project with € 6000.

We intend to create a veterinary committee, with veterinaries from different countries, which will watch over the best care for our animals, so that, if this project goes on well, our animals will have the best veterinary care as possible.

This year will also be special, for we celebrate our 20th. The festivity will take place on August 31st in Belgium. We’ll let you know more about it later. Pleas make a note of it in your agenda, we would be happy to welcome you!

Also, this year we welcomed some new organisations to help us find new homes for our dogs. Les Fils Du Vent for the region Belgium and the north of France, as support for our daughter organisation under construction, Scooby Belgium (fresh news about this later!). Viva La Hund and Animal Advocate in Germany, Scooby Mix Holland in the Netherlands and GRIN and VAGA in the USA. Our thank goes out to these people, who decided to support our work and think with us to try to solve the problems we have to deal with, something where not everyone is capable of. In fact, some people only see the romance of being the hero who finds homes for the dogs, but get nervous or lose carefulness or interest when they find out that this is not just a nice job, but also a very difficult one.

I want to remind you one thing, all this would not be possible without your help. Next year we hope you will still be there to support us, and if I’m not asking too much, let your friends, colleagues, neighbours know about us, for it’s the best publicity we can have throughout you, letting others know how wonderful our animals are.