When I first heard people talking about "Rescue Dogs" I actually thought that they were talking about dogs that worked for the fire and rescue service or something like that and that the dogs were helping to rescue people trapped in fires or earthquakes.
It wasn't until we took on our first rescue dog, Keegan, that I realized that they were talking about dogs rescued from being stray or being abandoned.
Once we had Keegan and she started to regain her health and her strength, we would walk for miles in the Spanish countryside.
They call it the Campo here, that is a Spanish word for countryside.
Quite near where we lived was a load of fields, hills and as it turned out an abandoned eighteen hole golf course.
Apparently the company that was building the course did not get some kind of planning permission for where they had wanted to build these luxury houses overlooking the course so they just pulled out and left it.
The thing is though that they had installed the water and drainage system before they had pulled out of the project.
So while you were walking through this abandoned golf course you would come across these big man holes with only an old pallet or piece of wood covering the opening.
Sometimes the drop into the manhole to the floor was about 10 foot down, so you had to be a bit wary.
One day a friend of mine knocked on my door saying he had found a little Labrador puppy over on the abandoned golf course.
He said that there was two of them but when he had grabbed the first one the other little guy ran down a drain that went into one of these man hole drains.
They were all linked together, right across the whole area where the golf course would have been, it covered miles of countryside.
Anyway I went over to have a look where he said he had been and I saw the other little puppy standing by the drain.
I crept over slowly so I would not scare the little guy.
He saw me coming and ran back down the drain, but not too far down.
I could see him looking out at me from inside the drain.
I knelt down next to the drain and put my hand out and just left it there.
The little guy slowly but surely over about a fifteen minute period crept closer and closer to me hand.
Eventually he was right next to me and he started to lick my fingers.
I just let him lick and nibble my hand for a few minutes and then very slowly picked him up with one hand.
He never struggled or tried to get away, he just let me pick him up and carry him back to my friend's house where his brother was now being looked after.
Both dogs were covered in fleas and ticks.
We got rid of all the fleas and ticks from them and gave them a little bit of water to drink and just a little bit of food.
I knew we had to be a bit careful when giving them food and water, as if they hadn't eaten for a long time they would gorge themselves and that would make them ill and maybe even kill them.
The next morning we took them along to the local dog adoption centre.
They are a very clever group at this adoption centre.
They have a little pen which is situated at the front door of the dog shelter.
Anyone visiting the dog shelter, that has a vet, a pet shop and even boarding kennels for people going on holiday, must pass this pen where all the little puppies are kept after they have been seen by the vet at the centre.
The pen is in a covered hall type area so is very airy and sheltered from the sun.
The two little puppies we took there that morning had been adopted within 2 days, we were over the moon at such a positive result.
You would think that this would be the end of this story but there is more, four more to be exact.
After visiting the dog adoption centre and finding out both puppies had been adopted we went back home to take our own dog, Keegan, out for her walk.
We were walking through the abandoned golf course again when Keegan ran off into a pile of thick bushes and started barking.
She chases rabbits all the time and runs around the fields through the bushes like crazy, so although I was keeping an eye on her I wasn't concerned about anything.
This time though instead of seeing she could not reach the rabbits as it had ran down their burrow, she kept on barking and walking around in circles by these bushes.
I went over to see what the fuss was and I managed to get Keegan to be quiet.
When she was quiet I could hear some kind of murmuring noise coming from the middle of the bushes.
I was intrigued now so I got Janine to hold Keegan while I pushed the bushes away to get a better look.
Then I saw a manhole with a wooden pallet covering the opening.
I could hear scurrying noises below the pallet so I pushed my way through the bushes and managed to lift the pallet from the top of the manhole.
Down at the bottom of the manhole were four little puppies, three virtually identical to the two we had rescued two day previously and another that looked like a cross between a Labrador and a German Shepherd.
They all looked beautiful.
I climbed down the manhole but they all ran down the drain attached to the manhole and as it was getting dark it was hard to see anything at all.
So we went home and told our friend Roger all about it.
The next day we went back taking Roger with us.
I went down the manhole again but this time I had some kibble dog food with me.
I stayed down the hole for around forty minutes with a trail of food running from me to the opening of the drain.
I even threw some kibble down the drain so they could eat some but feel safe because they were not too close to me.
Eventually they got close enough to me so they could eat the food out of my hand.
There were four of them In total and I thought if I could just carefully pick them up one at a time and pass them up to the man hole opening, everything would be great.
However when I carefully picked the first one up he began to struggle and squeal.
I managed to hold onto him but the others ran back down the drain.
I passed the little guy up to Roger who in turn gave it to Janine to take home.
I could not see the others now as they were way down the drain and it was pitch black.
We were about nine feet under the ground and the drain was falling away from the manhole, obviously designed to drain the water away from this manhole down to the next collection point.
Not good for us if it started to rain.
After a while we decided we had to do something a bit more drastic if we had any chance of rescuing the puppies before it got dark again, or indeed before it started raining.
If it rained they would surely drown.
We looked to see where the next manhole was in the same direction to where the drain ran away from us.
We found three that could be attached to where we had found the puppies so I got Roger to jump down one of them at a time and shout down the pipes while I sat in the original manhole listening for his voice.
We did eventually find the correct pipe and went home to get a torch.
Roger them climbed down one manhole and started to crawl along the pipe with the hope of making the puppies came towards me.
The distance between the two manholes was about two hundred metres.
Roger slowly made his way along and eventually saw the puppies in front of him.
As he crept towards them they slowly made their way towards me.
One at a time I managed to grab the final three puppies and pass them up out of the manhole to Janine and Carol who were looking after them above ground.
The very last puppy was a little girl.
She was beautiful, but very scared.
She didn't want any help from me, so when I managed to pick her up with my right hand she sank her needle like teeth into my wrist.
I didn't mind because I knew she was just scared, they probably thought we were going to eat them.
It still hurt like hell though.
We took the final three puppies back home and then made sure all four of them were clear from fleas and ticks and they all had a good bath.
They were all still terrified though so to try and stop them from being so scared we locked them in a dark shed where we knew they would be safe overnight.
The next morning we went to get them.
The shed certainly did smell a bit funky I must say, ooh.
We took the last four beautiful puppies to the dog adoption centre.
Once there they were checked by the vet, wormed and put into the little pen by the front door so everyone could see them.
In a few days all six puppies had new homes and hopefully happy lives with their new owners.
It was a long few days sitting down dirty manholes and crawling along drainage pipes but I think it was worth it, especially as all of the puppies were adopted by families.
You would think that this episode would be the end of our epic dog rescuing exploits wouldn't you, but it wasn't.
There were quite a few more after that, but those stories can wait for another time.