The Winds Of Change Have Begun To Blow

Quality of life is rapidly improving for the dogs

I remember burying Tina back in August and as soon as the top layer was on and her flowers and tennis balls were arranged on the grave, I just let our a roar into the jungle. It wasn’t sadness, or pain. It was just pure and utter determination. I shouted something along the lines of…

“Im going to make so much change in your name and we’ll turn your life into something memorable”.

I’ve used that energy in the last few months to push me on, get braver in my ambitions and ultimately help more dogs. Some great things are happening now…

The 260,000th Home Cooked Meal Of The Year Served

Pi Fa who cooks the food sent me the picture below of the trucks arriving with the ingredients for her to cook for the dogs. A convoy of trucks! She seemed super proud of what she was doing and how it has grown…

• 800 Dogs fed every single day of the year

• Food cooked by 3 local ladies

• Fresh and tasty ingredients in every meal improves the health of the dogs.

• The 261,500th was served today

This time last year I was still driving around with a bag 20kg of kibble on my bike. It takes a small army of people to make this happen daily but it feels good knowing that through all their struggles the dogs at least get a great meal every single day.

Shaq’s Miracle Comeback

After 6 nerve shredding weeks, big Shaq is healing up beautifully having undergone his life saving operation. It was an absolute rollercoaster of emotions both before, during and after the procedure and despite many ups and downs he made it and is looking like a million dollars.

Even better news is that he won’t be going back on the streets and as soon as he is fully healed this beautiful brave boy will be up for adoption.

Five Dogs Find Forever Homes And Mr Fox Is Next

It’s been a big week of getting dogs adopted and finding them forever homes. We have 7 on the move now in total…

• Tommy, Stitch, Solo, Kate Moss and Nicole Kidman all adopted. Their stories are truly remarkable.

• Several dogs in final stage interviews for their forever homes

The newest arrival looking for a home is the wonderful Mr Fox. He is a street dog that I fed from the very start and was sick this week in the vets with severe tick fever. People are always asking me if they can adopt him so I finally relented and said he can stay at the land and get a forever home. You can actually apply to adopt him here.

The 2284th Dog Has Just Been Sterilised

We can’t treat all the dogs for their injuries. We can only re-home a tiny portion and we lose so many others on the streets. What we can do is stop the flow of new dogs and that is the only scaleable solution to end this. It’s incredibly tough logistically, expensive and people aren’t very excited about it. But it works.

This week we just paid for the 2284th dog to be sterilised. You can follow them all on a map here. Every dot on this map is stopping the continued suffering. I can now confidently say 10,000s of dogs have not been born into suffering because of the sterilising we’ve done since starting this mission.

I can’t explain just how much planning is going on in the background to ramp this up even faster but 3 numbers will help explain…

• 2022 total dogs sterilised = 302

• 2023 total dogs sterilised = 2600 (approx by year end)

• 2024 dogs to sterilised = 1500 per month!!

Yes you did read that last line correctly. Everything is being put in place now to sterilise 1500 dogs per month in 6 locations stating on the 1st January. As always it will all be trackable here on the map. I’ll be trying to find ways to speed that up even faster because every operation helps save lives.

What started as a drop in the ocean is turn into a little ripple now and will soon grow into a wave.

Derek Has His Forever Home

He was pretty much the first resident moving into Happy Doggo land when the cement was still drying on his little suite. Derek has had so many ups and downs…

• 3 Month battle to stay alive initially

• 8 months for his fur to grow back

• Recent health scare included 5 vet visits and a trip to the mainland

• Although blood was being drawn from around his heart and lungs and we feared the worst it is actually a treatable fungal infection

The vet advised that Derek should stay in as dry and warm a place as possible. So just like that he has been upgraded to the couch in my house. He will live there forever now and see his days out in comfort. I’ve no idea how this dog is still alive but his retirement home is now sorted.

Tina’s Hospital Planning And Funding

I’ve been busy planning everything to get Tina’s hospital up and running and one vital part of it will be funding. So many people have asked me how they can help. Along with all the proceeds from my book (I’ll have those in January) we created some lovely products with every single last penny we make being used to fund the hospital build.

These 3 items will go on sale on Friday…

• Tina T-Shirts

• 2024 Calendar with everyones favourite dogs (Cindy Crawford is January)

• Colouring book for children

I’ll share these later in the week. To say I’m excited would be an understatement.

In the days after Tina passed people started using the #doingitfortina hashtag and it sums up how I feel now. I do feel she is looking down on everything. I use her memory daily to push me on. There was just something about her that made everybody want to do better.

She helps me in very unexpected ways like by thinking big. For example even though it sounds impossible to sterilise 1000 dogs I asked myself “why not bump it up and find a way to do 1500 a month”. It’s not that much harder and if I have any doubts on big decisions or big ambitions I just think of Tina’s face and preventing that type of suffering again. Her memory drives me on.

There are of course plenty of challenges and daily stresses doing this but I like to focus on the positives. There is enough bad news in the world and real progress is being made and dogs lives are being changed. The next 6-8 weeks are going to be the busiest and hardest to pull off in terms of things I’ve done since this mission started but I’m confident everything will get done. It’s scary but exciting.

As always I’ll share the ups and downs and I want to thank everybody for getting me this far. I struggle to reply to comments, emails and messages as I’m so focused on helping the dogs but there isn’t a day that goes past that I don’t feel the support and use it as fire in my belly alongside the memory of Tina. I appreciate it more than you’ll ever know and so do the dogs.

Big Love

Niall

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