A Massive Shift - Changing Hearts And Minds

True impact is needed

I’ve been having a hard time thinking about the street dog problem recently. It’s something so overwhelmingly big and complicated to solve. As I see and learn more my perspective has changed.

There are 500 million street dogs suffering around the world. Many in agony, being abused and suffering from disease and early death. I see it all on a daily basis. In some countries they are even culled, eaten or shot. We need a huge change of hearts and minds. Let me explain…

Humans Cause So Much Misery

People always ask me why I focus on dogs and the answer is quite simple. There are so many man made problems that face us in the world today. Dogs are one of them.

We bred them as companions and domesticated them. Like so many other things in this world we then toss them out and discard them without any afterthought.

In the past few weeks here are some of the cases I’ve seen…

• Matilda run over and left for dead with broken hips

• Pedro neglected on the streets being ignored and in agony

• A local man had his dog Nik stabbed

• Just this week I have been threatened by humans for helping a mum and puppies putting me and staff in serious risk.

I’m sharing this small handful of examples to show what it is like for street dogs and what we have to face.

What hits the hardest is that we have sterilised 90-95% of the island and these cases still keep popping up en masse. Imagine this suffering happening across the rest of the 500 million street dogs.

You can see why I am starting to think a tweaking of approach might be needed.

Sterilising Dogs - Huge Success Or Chasing Our Tails?

I couldn’t be more proud of the work we do sterilising dogs. By the end of this year we will be approaching 50,000 dogs sterilised. To put that into perspective, that stops around 500,000 new puppies not being born into a life of misery. Half a million!

Just this week I was out with the team as we caught 10 dogs that had eluded us on the island. It feels absolutely amazing (especially for the mums) as each dog you return has instantly eased suffering directly.

But what I am seeing is as fast as we sterilise people are breeding puppies, buying new dogs or outright refusing to let us sterilise their dogs. Sterilising is working as a big blunt tool but we need something more precise and long lasting alongside it. We need to change hearts and minds.

Thai Educational Social Media Content

In the past couple of weeks we have been busy launching our Thai social media content. We are now on Instagram and Tik Tok.

The first thing people might think is this would be a tool to raise money or to get word about Happy Doggo out there. I see it differently. I see it as a way to effect change at massive scale.

The chances are if you are reading this newsletter you follow me on social media somewhere. I would hope that the content I’ve shared has helped change your own opinion and educate you about street dogs and their suffering in a fun and entertaining way.

While that is wonderful around the world (for mainly English speaking people) I now realise we need to ramp this up for local markets where the problem actually is at it’s worst. In Thailand our content will…

• Change hearts and minds about street dogs

• Educate about sterilising and proper care for street dogs

• Put an onus on humans to look after dogs

• Inspire a whole cohort of people to become dog lovers and care for them

When people think of education they think classrooms or talking to people in person. I happen to think the most effective tool is the one that every single person, rich or poor, young or old carries around with them. Their mobile phone.

If we get this right and ramp it up quick enough I think it might just be the most effective way to improve the lives of millions of dogs.

Stats Are Great But Hearts And Minds Will Change The World

People who have followed my journey as it has grown into Happy Doggo will know the evolution in my thinking over the past couple of years. I was so naive in the early days that I thought I could help the street dogs by just feeding them some kibble. I think it’s really important to learn as we go and always improve the approach.

I love stats and the numbers we have managed already blow me away…

• Approaching 50,000 dogs sterilised since we started just 2.5 years ago

• Stopped 500,000 puppies being born

• 80 Dogs re-homed in Thailand and around the world

• 1000s of medical treatments and vet trips

• 300,000 home cooked meals served to street dogs in 2024

Those numbers are hard to grow in terms of cost, logistics and delivery but we will accelerate them. What I now want to add at scale is the hearts and minds educational content via social media in local language. It will be a bit harder to measure but my gut and some early signs just tells me it will work.

I spend every single waking hour thinking about how to solve this street dog problem. I won’t rest until it is done. Sometimes (and especially in the last month) I see our amazing work not quite having the impact I’d hope. Many times this is because of humans pushing back or outright hindering us.

What I now know is that It will always be an uphill battle unless we change the hearts and minds of millions of people. 10s of millions of people even. It’s yet another strand and huge workload but it will be done in record time because the dog’s lives around the world depend on it.

Hope you have a lovely weekend wherever you are out there.

Big Love

Niall

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