It’s been a busy week with the discovery of lots of new dogs and Lucky making a superb recovery which has filled me with hope for what can be achieved in the future.
I’m now up to feeding 30 dogs per day which is as far as I can go on my own (I said that at 20 but here we are). It’s fulfilling, enjoyable and I’ve bonded with lots of them and I’ve been using the last few weeks to analyse where this project should go...
Finding Puppies Is Bad
Puppies like the one below are cute for photos and social media likes. Who doesn’t like puppies?
The reality though is that they’ll mostly all have a hard life ahead. Many will die young and have a miserable time searching for food, battling illness and avoiding cars, cobras, parasites and humans who want rid of them. The females will also quickly be having puppies themselves. It’s a brutal life.
Although it sounds counterintuitive for someone who loves dogs my mission has to be stop as many puppies appearing as possible. To control the population and stop the suffering.
We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat
The 11 Puppies that I’ve stumbled upon this week living within just 100 yards of each other have changed my thinking completely. Food is just the tip of the iceberg and feeding them it is like treating a heart attack with a sticky plaster.
In an ideal world what every dog needs is…
Food
Treatment for any illnesses
Vaccinations
Sterilization (neuter / spay)
A home or safe space
Repeat steps 1-2 if there is no step 5
I feed my 30 dogs in about a 1 mile radius. There are 1000s more on my tiny island in Thailand alone. Millions of stray dogs across the country. It feels like a $100,000, $200,000 or $1,000,000 type problem. And that is only to get started.
There are wonderful volunteers all over the country helping to feed and look after dogs but that is really just triage and they only reach a fraction of the strays. It’s never going to fix the root problems. Dogs are going to continue suffering en masse.
Next Steps
The best part of my day is feeding the dogs. The sun is out, I drive through the jungle and they are all happy to see me and full of the joy that only dogs can maintain. I don’t want to lose that part of my day. It does however need bigger thinking to help more dogs.
So next steps as I write this are…
Set up charity / foundation
Decide on funding options
Once those steps are complete I can…
Find a base (to house the very sick dogs, collect food etc)
Hire people to expand the feeding
Bring in expertise to help with neutering and general vet care
Build out a network of support
These things take time but I want to short circuit them as much as possible as dogs are out there suffering today who need help. Speed is of the essence.
If anybody has any expertise in the area I’d always love to hear from you. I plan to visit some similar operations in the region in the coming weeks to learn more as well.
My mind is kind of frazzled by the amount and sheer scale of what I now have to do but it will be done.
Time to push on!
Niall
P.S… My own dog snoop is old and fairly unwell. He sleeps about 22 hours a day now but with things ramping up I needed to get him out of retirement to start working. He has been appointed CTO (chief tasting officer) and has the important job of checking the big bag of food every night that heads out to the 30 dogs the next day.
You can never be too careful with quality control and he take his job very seriously!
I admire hugely what you are doing & striving to achieve….. maybe try to contact ‘Takis Shelter’ as he started in a similar way in Greece and might have a lot of helpful information? I know that as soon as he set up on media, set up donations/being able to access donations, it turned everything around for what he was able to do to help the awful situations for these beautiful souls. Just might help….. Crossing for you and all the beautifuls 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻💪🏻👊🏻