Recently with a group of friends we visited a place called Cantinho da Milu, in Palmela - south of Lisbon.

They have a webapge but it modest and incomplete: http://www.sos-laica.org - The place is a amazing - very big, at least a hectar of land. But so many dogs! Around 400 dogs rescued from the streets, in need of new homes. It is overwhelming. Think that I come from Bianca shelter where there are 200 dogs and I was still overwhelmed by Cantinho.

The

It belongs to a lady, Milu, who had bought the farm and have been rescuing dogs for years. She works there herself every day with help of a few hired people but no volunteers (the place is not very known and off beaten track). She has very little donations so she buys everything herself: food, vaccinations, medications...

She concentrates on giving the dogs quality of life - they all live in "parks" - like in the Dogtown in the US, none of them is on the chain (!), they are all vaccinated, sterilised and medically treated if needed. Over 200 of them have been checked for leshmaniose in order to identify it early if any of them had it.

I was surprised how good the conditions were as it seems nearly impossible that so few people would be able to take care of so many dogs. The dogs are happy, lovely and sooo adoptable. But she does not have time for adoptions. She has no time to publish dogs on the Internet, build her own site, make home visits. So many wonderful dogs are there, those that could easily have a home and due to the lack of human resources they are not getting those homes.

We are a group of 15 people: we set a group that is called Dogs of Portugal and we will be looking for homes for Milu's dogs. We will be adopting dogs in Portugal (and for good adoptions distance does not matter to us) but also abroad, to Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway on the basis of contacts we have previously developped.

I have noticed that many expats are willing to help and welcome home a rescue dog. So I am optimistic. Moreover, there are some breeds that are "preferred" by certain nationalities: English people love water dogs, pointers and labradors, German people love podengos and Dutch people love serra de estrela dogs. They are all there, in the cantinho! Over the next weeks I will take pictures of them and publish. Starting with the water dogs - there are two adult females there!

I would like to present you with teh new blog of Dogs of Portugal, featuring first 20 dogs from Milu:

http://dogsofportugal.wordpress.com/

Each dog has several pictures in a slideshow.

We will soon have a webpage.

You can contact us at dogsofportugal@gmail.com
or call at 966156147

May I attract you attention to Lobinha, an extremely gentle husky cross bitch:
http://dogsofportugal.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/lobinha-looks-at-those-eyes/
and Anoise, a cross of PWD and Portuguese podenga, also very gentle:
http://dogsofportugal.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/annais-a-portuguese-specialty - More will come on the blog, all sizes and colours.

more

We are embarcing on an adventure :) By the end of the year I hope I will be able to say that many of them found new homes.

(9/8/11 Couple of links corrected - Jim Paws 4 Pets)