With her skills and huge success with newborns, Sharron has gained some renown amongst veterinarians and the Portuguese government shelters as a "Puppy Guru" - at one stage, Sharron had around 11 puppies that she was feeding 2-hourly.... absolutely exhausting.  However, suffice it to say that when those puppies leave to join their 5-Star families, they are fabulously healthy and happy.  Without exception, these lovely pups leave us with tears in our eyes and we all keep watching the CDH Facebook page for news of their progress.  It's not difficult to imagine how exhausing bottle feeding must be.... every 2-3 hours 24/7 for aroun 3-4 weeks, in the case of newborns.  In 2025, the count of bottle fed babies since 2019 was at 137!!  

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June 2020

The mobile unit was the designated puppy nursery for a couple of years until the Haven experienced two severe outbreaks of Parvo.... three puppies passed away and at any stage for weeks, Sharron was spending days driving around to see puppies in ICUs all over the place.  After struggling to deal with the cost of the medical treatment at around €6000.00, Sharron decided to keep all puppies in her home until they had been fully vaccinated for Parvo (at around 6 weeks). In fact, nobody besides Treve and herself get to handle the puppies in that period.  The puppies are often kept in the mobile unit after their final vaccinations.... it's warm in winter and air-conditioned in summer.... lucky little monsters!

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December 2020

A lot has been done to the unit - because all of our puppies seems to be budding "escape artists", we decided to build a nursery area with two sections where we can be sure that they can mostly be contained.

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February 2021

To give the unit a "nursery" look and feel, we took advantage of the artistic skills of one of our volunteers and we now have a unit that reflects clearly, that it's a home for puppies.  With huge thanks to Michael Keating for the hard prep work and painting of the base boards and to the artist, Jim Keating...... we love our new nursery.

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