Some Dog Numbers To Make You Seriously Smile

There were only good boys and girls this week

We live in a world where there is so much daily doom and gloom. Our online feeds can feel especially suffocating. Although working with stray dogs is probably one of the hardest subjects to cover in a positive way, thats what I try and do.

I only want to offer solutions rather than share problems. Give you joy reading updates rather than feeling down or even guilty that such a problem exists in our world.

With that in mind here are some really nice numbers this week that you as a community of dog lovers have helped me achieve...

80 Applications For Rodney

Little Rodney has has so many offers from around the world I had to have a friend help sort them for me. He will be getting his forever home decided this week and we are already working on his paperwork for travel. He’ll be with me for another couple of months while that is sorted. Rodney has beaten all the odds and will be packing his little travel bag soon.

100 Dogs To Be Sterilised Per Month

As I’ve repeatedly stated this is the part I want to scale up the fastest. Nothing saves lives more than stopping new puppies arriving. With 10,000 stray dogs on the island I live on (Koh Samui), 8 million in Thailand and 500 million around the world I want to stop the flow of new dogs. It is super expensive (about $50 per dog) and tricky logistically but I’m starting to make progress…

• 50 Dogs sterilised in both January and February.

• Moving to 100 Dogs per month in March and April

• That will be 300 Dogs in the first 4 months of 2023. The same as all of 2022.

• 400 Dogs in total sterilised since I started

• 10,000s of future puppies stopped as a result of this sterilising

There is not a waking second of the day I don’t think about how to ramp this up even faster. I’ll figure out a way to get to 10,000 a month as quickly as I can but even that won’t be enough. We are however off and running in a very serious way and speeding up.

1 Loving Home For Hope In England

Hope was one of the first dogs to arrive on the land. She was shot with a nail gun and slashed with a knife. She was completely shut down but thanks to a lot of patience and help from the other dogs she has regained her confidence and is full of life. She got the best news this week as a girl visited her fell so in love that she is adopting her. Hope is going to Essex in the UK. Her face says it all I think. There are 4.5 months between these pictures.

100 Tennis Balls For Tina

When Tina Turner arrived she was just 12.5kg (25lbs) and looked nothing like the Golden Retriever she is. After 3 weeks of feeding and medical care she is now at 21kg (43lbs). We nearly lost her to bloat in the early days but she is getting bigger and stronger by the day.

It might not seem like the most important part of the mission I am on but she got 100 tennis balls as a gift on Sunday. She still has a long way to go (we are monitoring for possible operation) but this is a dog that has got her happy face back again. Sometimes the mission can be so challenging that you need to stop for an hour and play with 100 tennis balls and appreciate the little moments.

800 Meals Served Per day

I shared the process for getting 800 dogs fed per day as so many people had been asking. It involves cooking well over a tonne of fresh food per week but the dogs love every mouthful and it is already improving their health on a daily basis. You can see how it goes from a central kitchen to being served to them on “plates” here. This happens every day of the year now.

I’m guessing you are probably like me and wondering how on earth it is already the 7th of March and where the year is going to! My plans are so big and so ambitious in terms of saving lives that weeks slip by as if they are only a few hours long. Sick dogs and logistical problems always pop up to distract me but things are really starting to go in the right direction now.

As always I could never do a 10th of this without all the support online and people willing me on. I never take any of that for granted. Hopefully you can see tangible results here that are helping individual dogs like Tina, Hope and Rodney but also 1000s of other dogs you will never even hear of through food. medical care and sterilising.

As always…big love to you all.

Niall

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