Saving The World's Street Dogs

A mammoth update on the mission

While I share a lot of fun and hopefully uplifting content on social channels this is the main place I like to keep everybody updated on the big overarching mission around saving street dogs.

The past 6 months have felt like there is a huge step change in what my days look like and what the net impact on dogs has been like. Some good, some bad and some frustrating elements.

One thing is certain and that is that big things are happening…

Approaching Some Huge Milestones

When we first set up Happy Doggo as an international charity we looked at the landscape in front of us and spotted 2 things we would focus on strategically…

1. Sterilizing dogs to control population

2. Funding existing organizations who did great work

Myself and our fledgling team thought that was the best way to make massive impact on street dog’s lives in South East Asia. Where we are today…

• We have funded the sterilizing of 94,300 dogs via our wonderful partners. In early August we will hit 100,000 dogs sterilized fully funded by Happy Doggo.

• Over 100 dogs re-homed. We just hit 3 figures with dogs safely in homes in Thailand and around the world.

• At the end of this month we will have cooked 1 Million meals that get served to street dogs on Koh Samui.

What makes me most proud is seeing the Thai team, Thai partners and local adoptions growing so fast. Our aim is to help street dogs globally but that happens primarily via local people in the communities.

Tina’s Hospital

We’re way behind on this. There is no point dancing around that subject. I’m making a video next week to walk through everything in detail but at a very high level…

• The initial proposed hospital was way too big

• The building was going to cost around $2 million to build

• Construction costs on Koh Samui have sky rocketed since we started planning

There came a point several months ago where we looked at the project and the costs and decided that the outcomes (the amount of sick dogs we could treat) would not justify that level of spend. We needed to rethink the whole approach…

We are very lucky that our partners on this Danny Forster & Architecture in New York and D103 here in Thailand got to work on a smaller and more compact hospital. Some key details that we have now…

• We have raised approximately $500,000 in funding for the hospital. This includes my book sales and founding donors. We can only use this money for the hospital and it is held in what is called restricted funding.

• The architects have been working on stripping out what I would call (in non-technical terms) “non dog stuff”. So the lovely rooftop walkways and bigger design elements are gone but we don’t lose the core functions of the hospital.

• By making all these changes and reducing the overall dimensions, we hope to be well under half where we had landed on budget before.

Tina’s memory and spirit will still live on within the building but we just have to be way more prudent on costs and the functions of the building. I take full responsibility for the building taking longer than expected and any changes. Given that I am ultimately largely responsible for costs and what we build I’d rather be slower than expected than waste money on something big, not functional and based on looks rather than with treating dogs in mind.

It probably doesn’t look like much, but below you’ll see the completely reconfigured floor plan, which represents an almost 60% reduction in build area, without compromising a single medical function. Unfortunately, when you reconfigure a floor plan this much, that means you also have to go back to the drawing board on engineering, mechanical systems, plumbing, etc. and that’s where we are now.

Tina’s Field Hospital

Given the hospital was taking us so long we wanted to get something operational that helps dogs immediately. That is the field hospital. We’ve been kitting it out and the good news is…

• Operations have been happening there

• Big T, Chance, Dollar Bill and many other dogs had major operations here

• We’ve been slowly testing sterilization with 5 dogs done

• Blood testing and other medical equipment have been a massive help

• Lots of wound cleaning as well as ear, eyes, skin issues being treated

• Vaccines and full documents for traveling dogs issued here

It’s been a revelation seeing the team working there but there are also so many teething problems. It’s great to be able to tease these out on a small scale before the big hospital launches. Some of the biggest challenges are…

• Learning how to interface with people who use the clinic

• Who gets to use it? What are the criteria given it is 100% free

• Returning sick dogs. When? How? Where? (We’ve found people just want to bring the street dogs to us and dump them with us forever)

• Permission documents, waivers, insurance etc.

• Staffing given the turnover of dogs there will be

• Monthly running costs

We are learning a lot by being hands on with Tina’s field clinic and I have to say it’s been a huge eye opener and the perfect size to learn how to scale up to the full hospital.

The Challenges - Dragged Away From The Dogs

I talk so often here about my real passion being to work with the individual dogs. Recently as things grow I find myself getting pulled away from that. It frustrates me a lot but to focus on the wider mission it is what is needed.

A tiny sample of the things I now find myself involved in…

• Full audited finances and charity reporting. We are now an official charity in the UK and also USA with Thailand pending. I can’t explain the amount of reporting, stipulations and admin this requires.

• 2024 Annual report. A huge undertaking that the team have been working on to explain to everybody what we do as an organization.

• Funding for 100,000 Dogs to be sterilized. Given that each dog costs us an average of around $35 that means finding $3.5 million to hand out in grants to have that amount of dogs sterilized.

• HR around building a team. We are now spread across 5 countries and different timezones. I have experience of running businesses but so much is new with Happy Doggo given the scale of what we are trying to achieve. From architect and building team to hiring vets. Employment laws, different cultures and making culture work for remote teams is a huge challenge.

Thats a tiny sample of things we now have to do. Throw in creating content, donor relations, community management, media and our tech stack and you can see how much work is not actually directly focused on dogs for me.

Keeping The Show On The Road Personally

I took on way too much doing the book tour recently. That nearly destroyed me physically. I did it with Tina in mind and to fund her hospital and the work we do but it came at a big cost personally to my health.

I normally talk about my mental health and managing that but it feels as if the last couple of years have caught up with my body physically recently. I’ve just pushed too hard…

• 8 trips to hospital in the last 2 months

• Serious Kidney and bladder infection after book tour

• Bitten in the neck by Kerry which caused serious infection I’m still managing

• Couple of depression and anxiety issues caused by exhaustion

I share those stories not looking for sympathy but rather to explain the mental and physical toll that comes with saving dogs. I’ve created the size and ambition of the project myself because I see the suffering of the dogs and want to make lasting change around the world. Do I wish for a simpler life with just 20 dogs like it used to be? Absolutely!

Getting Help With Bigger Structure

I hope this update doesn’t come across as me moaning. I just try to wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to sharing the mission.

If I look at cold hard facts the impact we are having is immense. The “we” part is very important as none of this could be done without people supporting online and our partners, staff, adopters and volunteers who do work on the ground.

The funding for 94,300 dogs to be sterilized is a great example. I mainly see that on spreadsheets, budget reports and conference calls. That work is stopping at least 1 million dogs being born into suffering but I haven’t personally been to see a sterilizing day in a few months. Ploy who manages our parter reporting is on top of every detail including costs but I miss seeing and feeling the energy of sterilizing days.

Without the money, marketing and awareness I can bring we wouldn’t be able to do those dogs but at the same time not seeing them in person makes it feel a bit distant to me personally.

When I started this mission It was just me on my moped feeding the dogs from a bag of kibble. The dogs above are Beyonce and Ryan Gosling who I helped raise, brought to the vets for sterilizing and still feed today. I hadn’t a clue what I was doing back then but I had to teach myself everything. There wasn’t even a charity then or Happy Doggo land or fresh food. It was s simpler time.

I can’t explain how happy I was. The gratification and impact I felt I was making was instant. I could see the change happening directly in front of me.

I suppose if this update could be summed up in one sentence it would be…

We are helping change the lives of 100,000s of dogs lives now and that is truly remarkable but I miss the simplicity and contact of helping dogs on a daily basis myself personally.

I remember when Tina was dying and I used to have to sit with her on her drip for 4 hours at a time I would talk to her a lot. I would tell her that I would go on to save millions of dogs in her name. Not just a couple here and there in Koh Samui but actually millions like her around the world.

The funny thing is that is now true. The promise has been kept. But there is just so much more to do. There are 10s of millions of other Tina’s out there. I just struggle with sitting down and taking stock. It’s the problem with this mission… it will be never ending. But I’m OK with that as there is nothing more important or rewarding I could be doing with my life. I just wish I could find a way to do it all faster as the need is so great.

To all of you who support me and the growing team I literally cannot thank you enough. Slowly WE are changing the world.

Have a lovely weekend wherever you are.

Big Love

Niall

P.S You can support the mission by just subscribing to this newsletter or donating to Happy Doggo here.