Date: August 26th 2012

Wow - time flies. We are almost at the end of August and it has been an incredibly busy summer.

We arrived back in mid-May and were met with wet cold weather and could get little done. But then summer arrived with a bang in June and apart from the odd storm we have had little rain and it has been well over 30 degrees nearly every day. It has been one of the hottest summers on record and there has been a number of wild fires across the country. There was one not too far away from our village here and another not too far from Sunny Beach. Luckily all were brought under control and only a lot of crops and trees were burnt.

We have furnished and completed the studio apartment we were doing for a friend and will be helping her rent this out next year. We have also done bits and pieces to our studio and furnished and finished our place in Sozopol. The studio at Sunset Kosharitsa is available for rent from just 75 Euros a week (money going to our dog rescue) and the Sozopol apartment for long term rent from now over the winter for 200 Euros a month plus bills.

We have also sold our renovated villa to a lovely Bulgarian family and had quite a few viewings of the other villa, although no takers for that one yet! We'll probably leave selling this until next year now.

At the end of June we took on 7 puppies that had been rescued from various places and suffered various levels of abuse. And have taken on a number of other dogs over the summer. We have started clearing the plot we own next door to make room for more dogs pens for next year and eventually in the future, maybe somewhere to house cats and an isolation pen. Lots of plans will just take time and money!

And on that note, we have found homes for all the dogs we have in our care in the UK but need to raise the funds for the transport company. We are not asking you to simply just donate (although if you want to please visit http://twitchynoses.chipin.com/transport-costs-to-send-dogs-to-new-foster-homes-in-the-uk), but maybe consider listing your property for sale with us.

If you have a property for sale in Bulgaria and would like to advertise it on our website and on our Facebook page then for the reduced price of 50 Euros you will get a long advert with photos and video (if you have it) on http://www.thetravelbug.org, the same promoted on our Facebook page to over 200 people. There is no time limit on the advert, it stays on until sold. All money raised from new listings will go towards helping our foster babies get to the UK.

Alternatively we can offer advertising spots and sponsor ads for companies or businesses.

Not much gardening has gone on this year as with little rain nothing is growing and the garden is a bomb-site with 10 dogs running around it. The veggies are struggling to get going in the heat as are we.

But to those with properties to sell here, I would say that the market is slowly looking up, IF you keep your prices realistic and are open to negotiate. The Bulgarians and Russians are probably the main buyers but there are a few other foreign buyers being enticed back by some very good deals.

Rachel