Taking Things To A Whole New Level For The Street Dogs

Change at massive scale

The ultimate goal of this mission I’m on to save street dogs is to cut the global population from 500 million to 250 million in the course of my lifetime.

It’s such a ridiculous goal that I sometimes squirm when I think about having shared it in previous updates. Why have I set myself up for such obvious public failure?

This month though just 2 years into the mission and after a lot of behind the scenes planning I feel like I see the future roadmap clearly laid out in front of me. A lot of things have started to come together…

A Game Changing 2000 Dog A Month Partnership

When I started this mission to help street dogs around the world 2 years ago there was one thing I knew for certain… I wouldn’t be able to do this alone. This week we were in the mainland launching a huge partnership with the wonderful Soi Dog.

• Up to 2000 dogs sterilised per month in 2024

• Aiming for minimum of 20,000 dogs in 2024

• 1876 dogs sterilised in the month of January alone as the teams ramp up

• 100 dogs sterilised on any typical working day

Those numbers are absolutely staggering and will save 100,000s of puppies being born in the future into suffering and pain as well as drastically improving the lives of the dogs who had the operations.

It can be easy when reading updates like this to look at big numbers and forget about just how much one simple operation can change an individual dog’s life. You can see a sneak peak of what it looks like on the ground here. I was walking around looking at the dogs below and thinking.. “yep this is how we’ll get it done”.

Buster, Tommy, Mr Fox And Many More Adoptions

We are really streamlining our adoption process in both Thailand and abroad which means that more dogs are getting a chance at a forever home.

• Tommy is in England sleeping like he’s never slept before on his own couch

• Buster is in Thailand with a wonderful new loving owner

• Mr Fox is heading off soon to Montana in the USA

• We have 5 other dogs preparing their paperwork to travel

We’ve also been working hard to professionalise this process in the background. Re-homing dogs will never be our core focus as it won’t solve the street dog problem around the world but we will continue to create some wonderful happy endings for dogs in our care as a key way of educating people around the world about street dogs.

A Fully Operational Charity

In order to do things at scale and create change around the world for dogs we needed a charity. That charity is Happy Doggo and it is now fully registered in the UK and can accept donations. This has been a time consuming process but we have great trustees and a clear plan to fund sterilising around the world. Some more information about what we have planned…

• Our core mission will be to help street dogs around the world with a key focus on sterilising dogs to control population and ease suffering.

• We also have an American Happy Doggo charity application pending with more great trustees.

• The people assembled and working behind the scenes are world class and will help this mission succeed.

• Along with the Soi Dog partnership outlined above we are rolling out 5 other partner sterilising programmes across Thailand and Indonesia as of this January.

You’ll hear me share a lot more about Happy Doggo and the plans in the coming weeks. We need to scale up incredibly fast if we are to solve the global problem in terms of team, finance, partnerships and lots of other areas. I’m confident we’ll do that.

Keeping The Show On The Road Personally

While I’m ramping up the charity and building out a global team of people to help I like to keep this email about the personal side of things. The mission, the journey and how it all started.

January has absolutely wiped me. I had Jumbo and Derek passing away recently and the only way I knew how to deal with that was to absolutely tear into doing positive things as a distraction. I feel like I’ve pretty much drained the tank now and I can see it in my face when I look in the mirror.

The good news is I’m building out supports and teams to help me on the mission. I’ve been very open about suffering from depression and anxiety so I have to manage that carefully.

2 Important things drive my thinking at all times…

1. Build something that is not dependant on me. This has to be way bigger than me. Everything I start from sterilising / adoptions / education has to be built into their own units that evolve and grow with people and partners who are more talented than me and who add their own skills and vision. It’ll take an army of skilled people to do this.

2. Sustainability. I’m already thinking about this as my life’s work. Hopefully i get another 30 years but equally I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. I’m trying to avoid quick wins and small local success but instead plant seeds and put systems in place that make this grow for generations. A bit lofty in terms of thinking but essential.

Its a very emotional thing to spend my time on with constant gut wrenching knocks to take but it is also a vocation and I feel blessed to have found it.

Tina’s Hospital

I will say this is the one area that I am behind on right now. I can quickly catch up on it but with the dogs passing, getting the sterilising from 200 a month to 2000+ and everything else going on I’ve let this part slip. February is the month that will see massive concrete movement on Tina’s hospital with detailed plans shared. The current status…

• Over 60+% of the money needed has already been raised (T Shirts / My Book / Donation commitments)

• The land has been secured

• Some of the hold up was around getting the charity and bank accounts and other elements in place. There is a lot of admin!

• It will launch on the 20th August (the one year anniversary of her passing) even if it kills me to get it done

Herself and Snoop have lovely resting spots just in front of where the hospital will be. Even though I am behind on this I promised her it would happen so there is no way we’ll be a day late.

Cindy Is Up For Adoption

It’s always nice to finish things on a high in these emails and it doesn’t get much better than sharing the news that the irrepressible and sensational Cindy Crawford has lost over 10kg (22Lbs) and along with 4 other dogs she is up for adoption. We made a video of he stunning journey here which shows her back running again.

Figuring Out How to 10X This Is Next

As I always say it is only when writing these updates that I feel the progress is substantial. Day to day when fighting battles (and often losing) to save dogs it can feel like I am swimming against the tide. But a look at some of the cold hard facts now show a difference is being made…

• 2000+ dogs a month being sterilised with more being added daily

• Fresh food provided daily for 800 dogs

• Structures and teams in place around the world to ramp up faster

• Dozens of dogs a month being treated for life threatening injuries and or re-homed in Thailand and abroad

• Over 100 million video views a month educating people about street dogs across various platforms

I question myself daily about how I could be moving faster to make change. I get more wrong than I do right but the trajectory now is clear. The goal was always to make massive change at scale and that really feels like it is starting to happen now. I’m not worried about 2024. It won’t be easy but we’ll get it done. What I am thinking about is how to 10X what we have in 2025 (or sooner if possible). Sounds ridiculous but so has every other goal we’ve had to date. The dogs deserve that level of thinking and speed of execution.

If you’ve managed to read this far through the update you need to know that literally none of the above would be possible without you. It takes a community as passionate and supportive as you to make this stuff happen. I feel blessed and humbled to be the one trusted to do this. That support comes in 100 different forms but I feel it daily.

Thank you for always being there and I hope we can accelerate things even further over the coming weeks. Theres a lot of big stuff coming up.

Have a lovely Sunday wherever you are in the world.

Big Love

Niall

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