Sophia And The Big Decision I Just Made

A Game Changer

You probably know that I like to explain my bigger thinking here on how to save millions of dogs as quickly as possible.

It is often when helping a particular dog that my thinking crystalises into something concrete. Today that dog was Sophia, a small puppy who has had a lot of ups and downs since she showed up just before Christmas.

Sophia’s Life Path So Far

Sophia is one of 100s of dogs I come across who have a very similar life path. The fact that she is alive is a miracle. In her incredibly short life this is what she has been through so far…

• Dumped in the jungle with her sister Lady Diana (now called Peaches) as she was unwanted as a female puppy. They were left for dead and most will die in this situation.

• She Found a small shack to live under where a group of volunteers feed her daily but she had to protect herself from the larger dogs who wouldn’t let her eat at first.

• Developed Parvo and 2 similar sized puppies who lived with her died of the same disease within 24 hours

• Emergency trip to the vets for 4 days in isolation to save her life. She somehow had the strength and medicine to beat the Parvo disease. (above)

• Continues to survive day to day under the shack even though she is still really a young dog.

She has beaten the odds so far but she also has to watch out for humans who don’t want her around, cars that might hit her, snakes, disease and a whole host of other threats.

Here she is getting her operation today so she won’t ever have to suffer with having her own puppies…

I Can’t Even Fix 100 Sophias

My whole mission is around saving millions of dogs lives. Lets look at some of the costs and even more crucially people Sophia needs to survive…

• Vet trip to keep her alive after Parvo (approx $150)

• Vaccines ($10)

• Sterilising ($50)

• Foster home for 4 months while she waits for paperwork (can’t find one yet)

• Paperwork and tests to get her a forever home ($300)

• Flights to a forever home ($800)

• Forever home (lots of options in Europe / USA / Australia)

Theres a bunch of other costs and time and effort to add in there. Let’s call it about $2000 to save a dog like Sophia without any cost added for time people spend helping her. Some of these costs would be bourn by a potential adopter but it is logistically hard to do one dog never mind 100.

The key fact here is that to save 100 dogs like Sophia would cost about $200,000 and eat up all of my time this year. That just isn’t an option nor would it fix very much. Great for 100 dogs but it wouldn’t even make a dent in the bigger problem locally or globally for street dogs.

So What Is The Solution?

I was thinking about all the above today when driving Sophia to her sterilising operation. She is approaching the age where she would start to have her own puppies and continue the cycle of suffering. When it comes to sterilising…

• I’ll have done 500 dogs by the end of March

• Trying to scale up to 100 per month at the moment

• Each dog Sterilised will stop them having 20-30 puppies each in their lifetime

• You also stop the puppies then going on to have their own puppies.

Along with Sophia there were 4 other dogs getting done today…

While that is good it just isn’t enough. It’s having a great impact already with 10,000 + puppies stopped but I need to go much much bigger.

That’s why when driving on the bike today with Sophia I decided to…

• Fund a clinic that has full time sterilising of 200+ dogs per month

• Full time staff and the best equipment

• Include vaccination of all dogs

• Build a database and tech tracking system to measure success

• Make this work and then roll out more clinics in different places

All sounds great obviously and it could get to 3000-4000 dogs this year. A huge step in solving the problem. That would literally be stopping 100,000 puppies coming into the world and suffering and dying young.

The one issue is a quick calculation and some budgeting shows it will be roughly $150,000 to kit out the clinic and equipment and staff it for the year. A scary big number but there is no point talking about solving the problem without offering solutions and thats the best one I can see.

I’ll work out a way to get that money but not just that…I’ll work out a way to fund 10 more of those clinics if that first one works. And after that 100 more clinics around the world.

Stupidly ambitious? Yes. Worth aiming for? Also yes.

So What About Sofia?

She is the dog that finally got me thinking big enough and committing to this in my head and writing it down here. All I am missing is a foster home for her and I’ll make sure the rest happens and she gets her forever home in the coming days.

She has truly inspired me to think bigger looking at her innocence and feeling her warm fur on the bike ride. Her little beating heart on my leg just made me think how precious one life is but also how to quickly help 100,000s more like her.

For that she deserves her forever home and the dream ending to such a hard start in life.

I came straight home to write this all down here and set myself a deadline of the 1st June to have this all up and running. How I do that I have no idea but I’ve written it down now so I’ll have to make it happen!

Have a wonderful day everybody,

Big love

Niall

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