DOG lover Mandy Holder found a new best friend from the Balkans after agreeing to re-home a stray she thought was in the Valleys.

Spaniel cross Ebony had been left for dead after being struck by a car in Macedonia when she was just three months old.

Mandy, of Llanbedr, near Crickhowell, offered to pay for her operation and take her in before she had even realised the gravely injured dog she’d seen a photograph of was nearly 2,000 miles away.

"I had seen a picture of this little dog all bandaged up on the vet’s table," said Mandy who had been in contact with a woman from Newbridge in the Gwent valleys following the disappearance of her own dog Kiki in September last year.

"I wasn’t going to have another dog, my mum and all my friends all said ’why not have another dog but I said if I can’t have Kiki I wouldn’t have another one’."

However Mandy said she was moved to offer to pay for the operation and asked if she could re-home the hound. She was then told the K9 dog rescue charity had already covered the cost of the operation from donations but she still needed a home.

"I was told I could have her but it would take about three weeks and all the travel and her passport were sorted. I was surprised when she said passport and that’s when I was told Ebony was in Macedonia, I thought the dog was in Newbridge.

"I thought I couldn’t back down now."

Ebony travelled from Macedonia to Bulgaria and had to stay a short period in kennels in Telford before coming to Mandy in the autumn.

"There are lots of stray dogs, or street dogs as they call them in Macedonia. She was hit by a car and just left at the side of the road."

Mandy said Ebony, who is around eight months old, settled into her new home in Wales straight away: "I had her at about noon and by 3pm she was snuggled up on the sofa with me watching Bergerac on the telly.

"She settled in really well considering she had never lived in a house before."