Fixing The World's Street Dogs - A Huge Update On The Overall Mission

Taking stock

I share plenty of daily dog content that puts smiles on people’s faces. A casual observer probably watches a video and thinks “ah thats lovely” and moves on. Readers here though will know it’s all about a global mission to change the lives of street dogs around the world. To save 250 Million of them over the course of my lifetime to be precise.

We’ve been in a very big “ramping up” phase recently so I wanted to share a massive update on all thats happening…

8000th Dog Sterilised

In my first year of sterilising (2022) I was able to do 302 dogs in total. I was so proud of myself as it felt like an insane effort. The reality was looking back now that was a tiny drop in the ocean. Where we are today blows my mind…

• We will fund the sterilising of over 2000 dogs in April alone.

• In about 4 weeks time we’ll hit out 10,000th dog operated on. A very rough estimate of stopping 10 puppies being born per dog means that will be 100,000 dogs not being born into suffering. We’ll ave stopped 100,000 dogs.

• You can see how many dogs we fund for sterilising with our partners here. (We now have 7 partners in 3 countries)

• You can see a visual map of all sterilisations we fund here

What I love is that we are now funding the very best people in the world like Janey at WeCare and these aren’t short term projects. We are trying to build out huge multi year programmes to make real global change and support the people who already do it with the 2 things they need most… money and awareness.

I’ll break it out in more detail soon but between our partners we have now funded 2 physical clinics and 3 mobile sterilising units with many more in the pipeline this year.

Individual Wins

Helping the street dogs is monumentally tough. We see endless abuse, death, injuries and it can feel helpless at times. While the big picture thinking and a global organisation is what is needed it is actually the small wins that keep things real for me.

Saving a handful of dogs locally might not change the world but it gives me so much satisfaction and hope that it fuels the belly for the bigger battles. We’ve been mostly winning lately…

• Billy is fully recovered from his slashing attack and travels on Monday to get his eyesight back. He will be operated on in a big hospital 800km away.

• Sandy has come out of is shell and is getting a forever home after we found the little 3 month old guy alone in a cave on the beach.

• This beautiful girl had the most amazing transformation this week.

• Mario came in this week from a very bad abuse case. We are patching him up and he will head with Billy to hospital tomorrow for a big leg operation.

We can never save all the dogs but these little stories mean everything to me. They remind me why I do this and keep me close to the problem so as I don’t forget to fix this at scale.

Big Picture Versus Local Challenges - Fighting Fires

Pretty much every single day I wake up with big ambitions to work on scaling up the operation globally and helping millions of street dogs. That would typically mean being on a laptop, taking calls, zoom meetings and spreadsheets.

Recently though we’ve had so many challenges. The biggest one being a huge fire at the land caused by a massive heatwave.

We also have to deal with dogs fighting, street dog emergencies popping up and the logistics of providing food for 800 dogs every single day. The biggest challenge is balancing the need for local action with the bigger mission. Thats something I really struggle with. You can start the day with the best intentions to scale up but how do you ignore a dog like Mario who’d been so badly abused? Or little Sandy alone in a cave?

The answer is more people, systems and resources which we are trying to pull together at breakneck speed.

9 Dogs Getting Ready To Travel Around The World

After a lot of paper work, admin and health checks we are about to have a large group of dogs traveling around the world. The one I’m most excited about is Mr Fox.

• Mr Fox is the 3rd Dog I ever started feeding

• As you can see below he is the first street dog I ever sterilised

• I’ve managed his life, health and food for 28 months now both on the streets and since we took him in. I’m so proud of him.

• He starts his epic journey to Montana in the USA tomorrow morning.

All 9 dogs are having their lives changed forever heading to new forever homes. Again this won’t solve the street dog problem but it is part of this mission that makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside.

Tina’s Hospital

I have a full email update coming on the hospital this week. Safe to say there has been extensive planning happening on this in the background. At a very top level…

• An an incredible architect is already working on the project. This is going to be a a world class facility.

• The land is secured. I’ve shown the scale of it below in red. It is beside where we are at the moment.

• We need to build a concrete road into the land which is about to start. Its currently a dirt track but we’ll need proper access. We’re close to agreeing the access.

The vet bills for April alone will be about $10,000 but the biggest challenge is actually sending the dogs off to the mainland or to specialised hospitals 100s of miles away. The logistics of that are tricky and its more stressful for the dogs.

The dream is about to start becoming a reality. I can nearly visualise walking into a reception packed full of beautiful Tina memorabilia.

The Scale Scares Me

You probably read all of the above and think “wow that’s a clear plan and he knows what he is doing”. The reality is somewhat different…I’m absolutely terrified by the sheer size of what this mission has become and I’m only able to do this because of the incredible people around me lending their help (and the online encouragement and support).

It’s a Sunday morning here and I’m sitting alone writing this on the land in the container with the dogs outside. These are the things going through my head…

• I can’t possibly find the funding and resources to make all this happen?

• People are bound to lose interest in my mission soon and I’ll be left with egg on my face

• I’ve promised so many things to so many people (and dogs) that I’m bound to start letting people down?

• This email update is already massively delayed because I’ve been so busy, maybe I can just go nap and send it tomorrow instead?

It’s normal to have doubts. What keeps me going are the dogs. I look at this photo below of catching Mr Fox 2 years ago and driving him to the vets. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was making it up as I went along. Trying to learn as I went. I feel the exact same now but just at a much much bigger scale.

It won’t be easy and there are huge challenges ahead but just like Mr Fox back then it will all work out. I’ll look back in 2 years time when we are sterilising 10,000s of dogs a month, have several hospitals and a whole range of new bigger problems and wonder what I was worrying about today.

Yes it is scary but all I can do is push on!

April will be the biggest month ever in terms of every metric we track for of helping dogs. Some are packing their little suitcases getting ready to travel to their homes, over 2000 will be sterilised and we’ll serve 25,000 freshly cooked meals. Dogs like Billy will get his sight back and Mario will be able to walk again. The wins are adding up and we are starting to scale.

The main emotion I have writing this is that I still can’t believe I am the one who gets to do this. So many people would love to be able to dedicate their life to dogs and I am the one is lucky enough to be in that position. To everybody who helps and supports me to do all of the above I am eternally grateful and so are the dogs.

Have a wonderful restful Sunday wherever you are in the world.

Big Love

Niall

P.S You can always support by either donating here or just subscribing to this newsletter.

P.P.S I’ve changed the name on this newsletter from 10,000 dogs to Happy Doggo. The original goal was to help 10,000 dogs per month the mission has expanded in scope massively. This is now the Happy Doggo update and all run through the official charity. It’s still just me writing it obviously (spelling mistakes included) but you will see subscriptions are with Happy Doggo.

P.P.P.S Apologies for a gap in newsletters. I am back to weekly now. As you can see above, the fires, travel and scaling cut into my time so I’m sorry for lack of content!