The Best Week Of My Life

Everything just clicked for the dogs

When you run a charity or try to fundraise it seems like the approach is often to paint as big a picture of misery as possible. To show graphic images and explain the huge problems that exist. I totally understand that but I fear that people also tune out a little. I wanted to come up with a completely new way of tackling the street dog issue around the world.

A quick reminder of what the mission has set out to achieve…

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.

The scale of that is absolutely preposterous and I’ve almost certainly set myself up for failure with such a lofty goal but I’m really starting to see a way to make to happen.

I wanted to share some of the super positive news around the mission and why this has been the best week of my life…

South East Asia Expansion

Stopping the flow of new dogs and controlling the population is the first big step to fixing this problem. The last few weeks have seen some huge steps taken…

• We now have 7 partners we fund to sterilise dogs

• These partnerships are in 3 countries (Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka)

• This now means we fund at least 2200 dogs per month to be sterilised

This feels insanely big to me already and we will sterilise over 30,000 dogs this year saving 100,000s of lives. But here is the thing… I’m not happy with this and think we can scale up even faster. This is only a drop in the ocean when you consider the 500 million street dogs there are globally.

It’s massively expensive and logistically challenging but I do believe we can add even more red partner pins to this map in 2024 and expand the partnerships we already have.

As we grow I want to share as much data as possible openly and even build out technology to help track what we do. For now we have the following…

• You can check the live sterilising numbers here

• You can see a visual map of all sterilisations we fund here

People And Sharing Will Change The World

When you see everything written down here in a newsletter it can seem so easy but the reality is very different. Dogs need to be caught, local rules followed, operations carried out, supplies bought, locations scouted and a million other things put in place.

I could never do this alone and even Happy Doggo as an organisation could never scale quick enough. I believe the true answer is in collaboration with other people who are passionate in the space. Its actually quite rare to see charities work together as often competition for vital funds impedes collaboration.

I’m constantly meeting people we fund and work with and am blown away by their dedication and how far they go to help dogs. At the end of the day it is humans who will fix the global street dog problem so working with as many like minded people and all going in the same direction is key.

It’s a tiny thing but seeing our logo on T-Shirts when dogs are getting operated on fills me with so much pride. What organisations need is funding, awareness of their work and frameworks to grow. I think thats what we can bring at massive scale.

The World’s Best Talent

Fixing the global street dog problem is an incredibly complex task. Some might even say it’s impossible. I have to believe the opposite and in order to do that I need the best talent in the world alongside me. The latest addition is a huge coup. You might know Anna Sedgley as Moritz’s mum (and thats her most important role!) but she has just joined the team at Happy Doggo as our CFO.

Anna is a world class CFO and will help us to scale up globally. I want to build the best, most organised and transparent organisation in the world and people of Anna’s calibre are key. We’re beyond excited at what this means for us and are looking for more of the most talented people around the world.

The Part That Means Most - Valentina And Nicole Kidman

The numbers and stats above can often just blur into one big masse of dogs. 2200 dogs sterilised a month is great but it can also be glossed over fairly easily. For me and many who follow it is the individual stories that mean so much. These are the wins and losses that push me forward and remind me why I do this…

• Little Valentina sadly passed away in my home 17 days after we brought her in. The cancer was just too severe in her lungs. It might seem like a sad story but I know this 17 days of comfort, love and the friendship Hank provided her will have meant the world. She left this world with dignity.

• Nicole Kidman was too soft for the streets and kept getting attacked. To see her settling into her bed in England last night beside her new brother after a long journey means the world.

These rescues are the part of this mission I live for. Being around dogs who need help is a constant reminder of why I started this. They are the most wonderful creatures.

Dog Lovers United

Absolutely none of the above would be possible without the support of everybody here on this newsletter and online in general. The picture below is of some of the things I’ve been sent recently from kind people around the world. As I always say I am just the lucky one who gets to do this out front and I get way too much credit as it is genuinely a community of dog lovers. If ever I need motivation I never need to look far to see how kind people are.

I feel like so many dog lovers would love to drop everything and help the mission. As that is unrealistic so many of you find other ways to chip in and follow along. Thats the key part of the success to date in my opinion. I can’t explain what that support means to me as I ride around on the moped every morning feeding the dogs. It does come with pressure as I don’t want to let people down and I want to move as fast as possible to help as many dogs as we can. That support is never taken for granted.

Why The Best Week Of My Life?

If you read the title you might wonder how on earth I come to that conclusion in a week where Valentina died, there were many injured dogs and I saw untold suffering while juggling endless stressful growth related challenges?

The reason I say it was the best week is because I’ve never felt like we’ve had more of an impact than this week helping the dogs. It has never felt so real, the change so clearly apparent and the impact so far reaching. It also feels like this is being built in such a way that there will be many more weeks like this on a regular basis. This is the new norm.

As well as all the above some random wins this week include…

• Cooking and serving 5000 meals for street dogs

• Finding burn victim Eve a wonderful forever home

• Seeing Billy running again and get over his trauma

• Helping 2 dogs walk again after broken bones

I could add dozens more to that list but you get the picture. Everything has just clicked.

I look at the things I was writing here last year and to be honest I had imposter syndrome and immediately after writing them I’d worry and think “why on earth have I said that? I can’t make that happen”. However somehow it all keeps coming true and the momentum continues.

Thats why I don’t want to paint a picture of misery. There are so many dogs suffering but the plan is starting to work. The progress concrete. All I need to do now is to continue to figure out how to 10X the next phase so more dogs can be saved from suffering.

There is a still a hospital to build, partnerships to ramp up , millions of dogs to sterilise, educational programmes to roll out, legislation to change, data to process, millions of dollars to raise and endless dog welfare issues to sort and those things will all happen.

But sitting here on a Saturday night writing this with Hank sitting beside me I feel very content. My entire life is dedicated to this and after so much hard graft I can see the tide starting to turn. I’ll go to sleep knowing dogs are starting to be saved at scale and that makes me immensely happy. To everybody supporting and backing this mission the dogs are all extremely grateful.

Have a wonderful weekend wherever you are

Big Love

Niall

P.S You can always support by either donating here or just subscribing to this newsletter.