One Young Man And His Puppies

A huge mountain to climb

If I broke down all the things we have to do to fix the street dog problem, it would be a very boring and mundane email. I think what helps everybody to understand what we are trying to do is a real life example.

That example came last week when a young man called Myo got in touch with us about some puppies that were dying in a local migrant camp.

Like Walking Into A War Zone

I’m not a trained vet or even close to it but walking into these situations can feel like entering a war zone for dogs or some sort of emergency triage unit. The poverty is extreme and there are dogs taking their last breaths under the shacks. Dogs who have open wounds and bodies being carried out the back to be cremated. It’s a lot to take in.

The Human Element

The cause of all this was parvovirus which can be quickly lethal to young, sick or old dogs. Luckily a kind local man call Myo reached out for help. He is a huge dog lover but he’d never heard of the virus, barely knew what sterilisation was and was just watching the little puppies he’d help raise die one by one, hour by hour.

The average salary of a migrant worker who lives here is about $300 a month or $10 a day so you can see how hard it would be for them to do anything like a vet visit. Even feeding the dogs is barely within their means.

The street dogs flock to these people because of their kindness and scraps of food but anything beyond that is impossible. Myo trawled Facebook and Instagram and used Google translate to reach out to us.

The Cold Hard Numbers Of An Incident Like This

It’s really hard when you love dogs as much as we all do to see situations like this but you just have to look at the cold hard numbers sometimes and try find a solution…

• 5 Puppies dead

• 1 sole puppy survived (after 4 days in the vets on a drip)

• 16-20 Other big dogs survived the outbreak

• 12 Dogs to sterilise

• 2 Dogs Pregnant

• 1 Dog in heat about to be pregnant

• 1 dog needing emergency vet care

This is a massive logistical problem but it’s also a financial one. The costs are roughly…

• $500 for sterilising dogs

• $100 preventative medicines

• $100 in Vaccines

• $800 in emergency vet care

• $1500 Total cost to fix the problem

If we didn’t sterilise the dogs here the 20 would quickly turn into 50.

So How Do You Fix This At Scale?

This is a hard enough situation to fix as a one off but the reality is that this is being repeated all over Thailand and in many counties around the world.

It really irks me that we have sterilised so many dogs on Koh Samui but this sort of thing can happen literally 1 mile away from where Happy Doggo Land is (down a little side alley). We’re doing a lot but it just isn’t enough. I know you can’t save all the dogs but sometimes these cases feel like a personal failure. We just have to build on what we have started…

As this mission ramps up the thought process does as well. My head was spinning coming out of the camp and carrying dead or dying puppies to the vets. It’s pretty soul destroying to see such suffering for the dogs while their owners try their best with so little. The clear plan has to be…

1. Sterilisation

Anybody following now knows the huge effort we are putting into this…

• By the end of 2024 we’ll have done 40,000 dogs

• This will stop an estimated 500,000 puppies being born into suffering

• We really want to ramp this up even faster

2. Education

It’s always been part of the plan to get to this but the need is now becoming even more clear.

• We did our first small education event last week

• We need to roll this out on a huge scale

• Its expensive, tricky culturally to get right and hard to get it started from scratch.

• We need to reach millions of people with this to make lasting change

3. Legislation

I’m not 100% sure thats the right word but we need to get government support in the countries we operate and at a very high level.

• Help enforcing cruelty rules

• Public funding to match funding that we raise

• Logistical help to do things at massive scale

After this incident I’ve really decided to pour more petrol on the fire and speed all this up. We can’t go any faster than we are on sterilising but on points 2 and 3 we should.

Many Problem Are Brushed Under The Carter By Humans

I like to look through the photos on my phone when thinking about the street dog problem. The one below got me thinking…

• Inside a tiny workers shack where we were with 5 of the sick dogs

• Myo is a refugee from the war in Myanmar

• Valeria who is helping me is from Ukraine also escaping the war there

• The dogs have absolutely nobody else to help them. They’ve been let down by humans in general as a species

I firmly believe the street dog issue globally (500 million of them) is a man made problem. We’ve let them down. It’s up to humans to fix it.

This is one small example of us helping dogs locally but my mission is to drum up support around the world in terms of finance, a movement and then political support and education to change this at scale.

It could be easy to leave a situation like this and be angry but I have to walk out of there with a plan and to make sure it changes for good.

I normally write about more personal and warm fuzzy stuff in these emails but I think it’s important for people to see what we face on the ground. Given the support and help from people on this journey I also want to try explain my overall thinking.

The important thing is we are making huge progress on so many fronts but we can’t take the foot off the pedal. It needs big bold action to stop the suffering of these poor dogs.

In terms of the outbreak itself it is now under control. Myo has one little puppy that survived that he is looking after and all the dogs are treated and healthy there and we’ll keep a good eye on them. I’m even looking into possibilities of finding a way for him to join the Happy Doggo mission.

As always thank you so so much for helping and have a wonderful Sunday wherever in the world you are.

Big Love

Niall

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