A collage of donations large and small from four different Dutch donors

Two transport vans arrived at the shelter very early one morning last week, filled to overflowing with gifts for PAWS. The bulk of this was the latest installment of free food donated by our Sponsor MedicAnimal. But also included was a big donation from GINN (Greyhounds in Nood Nederland) with special items like beautiful doghouses, special dog beds for sick animals and wire dog benches. Animal clinic Maaswijk had made a big effort to collect a range of veterinary supplies and other donations. A tireless group of individual gatherers including Celine Nieuwenburg, Fabienne Hilkens, Ingrid and Maurice from Food for PAWS, Nicole Verhaeren, Sabrina Marters and Jaqueline Six-Dijkstra had been hard at work and many of these gifts also came back on the enormous BSS Horse transporter from Holland.

The combination of MedicAnimal's regular donation of large quatities of food and the availability ofBSS Paardentransporten's lorry to bring it back to Spain free of charge is producing a real reduction in PAWS shelter expenditure - at precisely the time when other costs are going relentlessly up. We remain very grateful indeed to both companies for their considerable support.

None of this would be possible without the dedicated support of the volunteers in Holland who ferry large quantities from the originating MedicAnimal warehouse to the BSS pickup Depot: Nicole Visscher, Jan de Krey and Ingrid Blanker. And equal thanks to the four shelter volunteers in Spain - Pablo, Driss, Brian and Mark - who turned out at 5 am at a motorway junction in Murcia on a cold damp morning to tranfer the whole load from the BSS transport lorry to the two PAWS vans and drive them back to the shelter.

Nicole and Ingrid, two of our tireless Dutch drivers

PAWS is very grateful for all that is done for us in the Netherlands. Every time we are still amazed and excited by how much support we are receiving. Great thanks to all.