(Beth Clifton collage)
Big goal, however Soi Dog Foundation has historical past of success & Happy Doggo has ambition
KOH SAMUI & PHUKET, Thailand––“Niall Harbison’s Happy Doggo and John Dalley’s Soi Dog Foundation together are launching a mass spay/neuter campaign aimed at ending the suffering of homeless animals across Asia,” Soi Dog Foundation advertising and press officer Amy Bryant emailed to ANIMALS 24-7 on February 8, 2024.
“Our joint project will see 90-100 street dogs neutered and vaccinated a day. That is 2,000 a month and over 20,000 a year,” promised Bryant.
“Yeah, right,” stated ANIMALS 24-7jaded by seeing grandiose claims in appeals and media releases a zillion occasions a day for donkey’s years, most of that are by no means even near fulfilled.
Niall Harbison and John Dalley.
(Facebook picture)
Soi Dog Foundation was first to achieve 1,000,000 animals fastened
But this media launch got here from the Soi Dog Foundation, the primary animal charity on the planet to achieve 1,000,000 spay/neuter surgical procedures really carried out by workers surgeons, working all through Thailand.
(See Soi Dog celebrates 1,000,000 animals fastened in 18 years; lesson for U.S.)
Realizing that, ANIMALS 24-7 pulled the communication out of our digital “junk” file and gave it a better look.
“The project launched into action in the southern province of Surat Thani on January 30, 2024,” Bryant stated. “On the first day, 47 dogs underwent spay/neuter surgery and received life-saving vaccinations against diseases including rabies, distemper, and parvovirus.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“International notoriety”?!
“Carrying this momentum forward,” Bryant continued, “are two fully equipped mobile clinic teams who will move strategically around the province, humanely capturing, then neutering and vaccinating street dogs before returning them safely to their territories.”
Said Niall Harbison in a manufactured media launch quote, “There are somewhere between eight and 15 million street dogs in Thailand. Mass sterilization really is the only way to fix this once and for all.”
Resumed Bryant, “Based on the nearby island of Koh Samui, Niall has gained international notoriety for his work feeding, sterilizing and treating street dogs, which he documents online.
“Happy Doggo is a registered United Kingdom charity, founded in 2023.”
Gillian & John Dalley.
(Facebook picture)
Soi Dog Foundation more-or-less arrived with tsunami
Soi Dog Foundation can also be a registered United Kingdom charity.
Founded in Phuket in 2003, Soi Dog Foundation initially earned worldwide credibility as a number one first responder to the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004.
The tsunami killed at the very least 225,000 folks in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand, together with Soi Dog Foundation cofounder Leone Cosens.
That left recent British retirees to Phuket and Soi Dog Foundation volunteers John and Gillian Dalley in cost––and Gillian had simply misplaced each of her legs from the knees right down to a nasty an infection acquired whereas rescuing a canine from a muddy swamp.
John and Gillian Dalley collectively constructed the Soi Dog Foundation into one of the achieved animal charities in Asia, main profitable campaigns in opposition to rabies and the canine meat trade in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, in addition to in Thailand.
Notorious spay/neuter surgeon.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Notorious B.I.G.?
But Gillian Dalley died of most cancers on February 13, 2017. John Dalley not too long ago returned to the United Kingdom for well being causes.
And Vocabulary.com defines “notoriety” as “fame you get from doing something bad or being part of a misfortune or scandal.”
It isn’t a phrase usually seen in media releases.
Contacted by e-mail, John Dalley defined, “Note this story relates to a project in Surat Thani province. Last month the Soi Dog Foundation sterilized over 24,000 dogs and cats across Thailand. The target is 260,000 this year. I believe this is the largest neuter/return program anywhere in the world,” and it’s in reality already properly underway, not only a promised start-up.
Niall Harbison, founding father of Happy Doggo.
(Facebook picture)
Who is Niall Harbison?
That left one other query, although: who’s Niall Harbison?
Has he really achieved one thing past “international notoriety,” and may he proceed the momentum of “the largest neuter/return program anywhere in the world”?
“Originally from Cookstown, County Tyrone, Harbison moved to Dublin in the late 1990s to train as a chef at Cathal Brugha catering college,” wrote Barbara McCarthy for the Irish Times on July 8, 2022.
“A ski season cheffing in the French Alps led to jobs on yachts along the French Riviera. As Harbison’s experience grew, yachts got bigger, and via ‘good fortune,’ he got a private cheffing job on the mega-yacht of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.”
Eventually Harbison based, build, and bought the social media-based corporations Simply Zesty and Lovin’ Dublin.
Niall Harbison. (Facebook picture)
“Was in a dark place”
“He was in a ‘dark place’ in December 2018,” up to date Genevieve Fox for The Guardian on August 27, 2023.
“One day the rain and the depression got too much, and so, on a whim, aged 39, he left for Thailand, first to travel with his girlfriend at the time, and then to make a ‘forever’ home on Koh Samui,” an island on the east coast of the Thai southern peninsular, roughly reverse to Phuket, a metropolis on the west aspect.
Harbison misplaced the girlfriend in December 2020, however stored his canine Snoop, adopted from the Irish SPCA in 2012.
“He went on a ‘particularly ferocious’ bender,” recounted Fox, “which he only now recognizes was part of a mental breakdown. On New Year’s Eve 2020, when Harbison was ‘completely unable to function,’ a friend came and got Snoop and Harbison admitted himself to hospital.
“After leaving hospital in January 2021,” Fox wrote, “Harbison spent the following 12 months ‘just walking and trying to live and figuring out how to do something meaningful.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Who’s going to feed them tomorrow?”
One day Harbison “stopped and fed some dogs in the jungle. But then I realized,” Harbison instructed Fox, “Who’s going to feed them tomorrow?”
“Working with local vets,” Fox stated, Harbison “began funding the sterilization of the dogs to curtail the stray population, saving them from hardship and suffering, and paying for their vaccinations.”
Now 43, Harbison based Happy Doggo in August 2023, setting a objective for himself of changing into “able to pay for 10,000 dogs a month to be sterilized,” continued Fox.
“In his first year, he managed 1,200 dogs,” fundraising on social media, with “579,000 Instagram followers checking in on the dogs he has treated or saved,” Fox stated.
John Dalley and buddy.
(Soi Dog Foundation picture)
Goal is to chop world road canine inhabitants in half
“My ultimate goal is to cut the number of street dogs in the world from 500 million to 250 million,” Harbison instructed Claire Murrihy of Irish County Magazine two weeks later.
“It’s a huge and ambitious project,” Harbison conceded, “but I am determined to do it over the course of my lifetime.”
Partnering with the Soi Dog Foundation makes begin.
“We share the belief that spaying and neutering is crucial to ending the suffering of stray animals. Our neuter/return program is one of our largest,” stated publicist Bryant. “Soi Dog currently operates 18 mobile clinics across Thailand, tirelessly working toward this mission every day.”
Rahul Sehgal, Soi Dog Foundation director of worldwide advocacy.
(Soi Dog Foundation picture)
Rahul Sehgal
Soi Dog Foundation additionally occurs to have on workers Rahul Sehgal, who’s among the many few folks on the planet––apart from John Dalley––who has already achieved something akin to the mission Harbison initiatives for himself.
Now the Soi Dog Foundation director of worldwide advocacy, Rahul Sehgal “leads our team focusing on ending the dog meat trade in Asia, currently focusing on Vietnam and the Philippines,” John Dalley instructed ANIMALS 24-7.
“He is not involved in our neuter/return program,” Dalley stipulated.
But Rahul Sehgal is there.
A 1998 graduate from Gujurat University, with a level in sociology, Sehgal in 2000 began the Animal Help Foundation in Ahmedabad, establishing a high-volume road canine sterilization mission that in 2006, as one of many first such initiatives in India to make use of gasoline anesthesia and the “keyhole” surgical procedure approach lengthy practiced within the U.S., spayed or neutered 45,000 dogs in ten months.
Rahul Sehgal. (Facebook picture)
Started in Bhutan on Valentine’s Day 2009
Running afoul of native politics in Ahmedabad, basically for being too profitable at too young an age, with out sturdy political connections, Sehgal took a job directing road canine sterilization initiatives for the Humane Society of the U.S. subsidiary Humane Society International, first in Bhutan and later in Nepal and the Philippines.
The Bhutan mission started on Valentine’s Day 2009, utilizing Indian veterinarians to coach a Bhutanese group who sterilized greater than 2,800 dogs of their first 4 months and simply stored going.
Beth & Merritt Clifton
Blogged Kitty Block on October 24, 2023, as president of Humane Society International earlier than a February 2018 promotion to the presidency of the Humane Society of the U.S. itself, “Today, more than 153,000 dogs in Bhutan have been vaccinated and sterilized and more than 31,000 pets have been registered and micro-chipped. Estimates suggest that the program has achieved nearly 100% sterilization of all street dogs in the country.
“Given this remarkable outcome,” Block stated, “we are celebrating this successful 14-year partnership with the Royal Government of Bhutan, which now runs the program independently.”
