Niall Harbison
Appearances
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs
Oh, here he is. Hello, mister. His tail is wagging, which is a good... That's my finger, mister. You can see his back leg is really not doing fantastic. He's in a lot of pain. We can fix you, mister. You're going to go to the doggy spa, a full health check-up, nice food. What more could you want than that, mister? It's your lucky day.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs
Lovely to be able to jump in there.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs
So down here, we're just walking past the dogs. They'll probably start barking. That's Bridgie. I'm sure most people have been to a dog charity. It can be quite depressing. It can feel like a prison where the dogs are going crazy and it's noisy. I wanted it to be the opposite of that, if possible. Dogs are still, you know, they'll bark and they'll fight a little bit.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs
But we wanted to make it nice for the dogs and for the people.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs
Yeah, and it is. It's more like a rehabilitation centre where we can get the dogs back on their feet. I mean, the thing is, they come in bad, but dogs have unbelievable spirit, as most people know. They might be sick, but within a day or two, we can turn their lives around.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs
We rely really on, you know, medicines and doctors and vets, but actually a nice, safe place, food, love, just a little bit of attention, that can... fix an awful lot. It's not going to fix cancer or a broken leg but it does help an awful lot with the street dogs.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs
I was always an alcoholic and suffered from depression. But I moved to Thailand to get away really from the grey, cold English-Irish winters to try and help my health. But that sort of backfired because I ended up in hospital here from nearly drinking myself to death. But then I had a sort of epiphany. I was like, I have to do something meaningful in my life.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs
And that's when the street dogs came in. So I just started feeding one or two on my way home on the bike. And then it's grown into this. It's just more and more dogs... And we sterilise dogs. We're building a hospital. We sterilise 7,000 dogs every month. So I'm trying to make a difference for the street dog.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs
Well, actually, people like a bit of good news, you know, and that's hopefully why they're starting their day with that, because there's quite a bombardment of bad news. So, yeah, it's a little bit of hope in their day. What is your ultimate plan? The ultimate plan is ridiculous and I'll probably fail. There's 500 million street dogs in the world and in my lifetime, I want to half that.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs
So that's 250 million street dogs. So it's bonkers to try and do that. But we're going to try and do it through sterilisation, education and legislation. We need to get government support. We're on the way, but there's just so much to do.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs
Boy, Mr Tom Cruise, look at that leg go, mister. It's back in action today. It's back in action. You're moving faster every day, Tom Cruise. I can't keep up with you, mister. You're a flying machine. You're a flying machine. Look at him go. If that's not the happiest dog in Thailand, I don't know who is.
Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs
I can't keep up with you, mister. You're a flying machine. You're a flying machine. Look at him go.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
Well, when I got out of hospital, I actually just started feeding one dog, two dogs, literally on a very small scale. And it quickly grew then to the stage where I was feeding 80 or 100 street dogs myself. And we now actually feed 1,200 every single day with fresh food. But we also rescue dogs. And one day I came across a beautiful dog, Tina. She was on a chain.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
She wasn't beautiful when I first saw her. She was... chained up, she'd been used for breeding, terribly malnourished, and she was close to death. So she kind of reminded me of myself. And I rescued her, which was tricky, but she blossomed back into the most beautiful golden retriever you could ever imagine. And unfortunately, it wasn't straightforward.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
The damage had been done already with Tina and her kidneys were really bad. So she actually only lived for six months. But in those six months, she inspired me by not living in the past. And she really just had this magnificent outlook on life and was a wonderful, wonderful creature. And she inspired me to go on and do wonderful work in her name. And we're building a hospital
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
We sterilize, which is neutering or spaying 7000 dogs every single month. And we obviously rehabilitate more dogs. So a lot of that has been done in Tina's name.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
Pretty much straight away. I brought her home the first night and we had this incident where she was incredibly skinny because she hadn't been fed. And it's actually a thing called refeeding syndrome. So I thought the best thing to do for a skinny dog would be to give her a big wholesome meal. Turns out that's the worst thing to do.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
I nearly killed her because her stomach expanded with gas and really, really dangerous. So I made a mistake. She was in my apartment and she nearly died two days after saving her. So from that very, very early day, she was with me and we had a very, very close bond and she survived luckily. And we went on to have loads of time together, but not enough.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, May 11th, 2025. Niall's new book, The Dog Who Changed the World, is on bookshelves now.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
I still miss her on a daily basis, but her sort of being and just her presence has inspired me to go on and help so many other dogs.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
There's so much work to do. So in Thailand, where I am, there are 8 to 10 million street dogs. So it's a very hard number to process. It's huge. If you go to your local gas station, if you go to your local food mart, there'll be 8 to 10 dogs outside everywhere. And they're not owned. They're part of the community. So it's a real battle between the community and the dogs.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
Not everybody wants 10 street dogs outside their house ripping up the trash. So I have to find a way that is not just rescuing one individual dogs, but it's all about trying to change legislation, trying to do the sterilization, trying to educate the kids and really create a movement that will help dogs at massive scale. Because there's no point in me going around.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
I could go around and find another Tina, you know, 10 times a day, but that's not going to fix the core problem. So I use Tina's memory to... I remember burying her and I remember saying, OK, I'm not going to your life is not going to be in vain. I'm going to make change that is impactful in your name.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
Yeah, sometimes we re-home them locally. So we find some brilliant owners. Sometimes we re-home them abroad. I'm very lucky to have a big social media following and people love the little characters. So we have dogs in England. We have dogs in America. Mr. Fox is one of the dogs. He's in Montana. We have Brad Pitt who are re-homed. He's in Long Beach. Snickers is in Washington.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
So we rehome a few, but the rehoming is never going to fix the problem. And I'm well aware that there's plenty of shelter dogs in America, for example. But what the rehoming does for us is it helps us sort of educate the world about these wonderful street dogs that they are, in fact, you know, just like the pets that a lot of people have. They're dogs who just need a home. So...
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
The storytelling around rehoming the dogs is really educational. But again, it's not going to fix the problem by rehoming a few dogs. It's part of the much bigger educational program.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
Wacker was his name for a start is quite funny because when you go to the vets, they ask you for a name. And I might arrive at the vets five times a day with a new dog. So I arrived with this dog in my arms who a member of the public had called me about. And he had his head was split open. If you look on the Internet, you'll find a picture. And you could I'm not joking.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
You could nearly see into his brains that somebody had hit him with a pickaxe straight down the middle. They'd obviously tried to kill him. And I held him, brought him to the vets. The vets told me that they'd missed by a millimeter, one more millimeter and he was gone. So the Thai lady asked me, okay, what's his name? And I couldn't think of anything. I just thought he'd had a whack on the head.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
So I just said, look. His name's Wacker. So I wrote that down on the piece of paper. And then he started behaving. Once he recovered, he started behaving quite regally and he was quite proud of himself as he walked around. So he became King Wacker. So King Wacker now recovered, took about six months, and he's now King Wacker of Scotland.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
He lives in Scotland with his family and he has a wonderful life there. So I think it's just part of the storytelling. And I think that's my favorite name out of all of them.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
I'm not going to lie and say, you know, I've got it figured out and it's easy. And it's not. It's really, really hard. We see dogs who've been shot. We see dogs who've... I've seen quite a few dogs poisoned. And seeing a dog poisoned is, you know, incredibly traumatizing. You see them taking their last breaths. Their legs are kicking. It's...
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
to see something like that is horrible, but you just have to push on and things like Tina helped me push on and the success stories, the whackers, the Brad pits, the dogs that we've adopted. I just simply get home broken some nights, but I look at them on my phone and the pictures of them.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
And it, it shows me that, look, you can't save all the lives, but you can, you can definitely have a positive impact.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
That's a good question. I was really broken when it happened because it sort of lasted for about a month and I had three dogs die at the same time. My own pet, Snoop, Tina, and another dog called Derek. And I buried her. I stayed strong. I have to stay strong for the dogs themselves because when they're dying, you have to be there for them. But as soon as she, I buried her myself and
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
I just I remember screaming. It's in the middle of the jungle, but I patted the ground. I remember just sort of screaming into the air being like, I'm going to, you know, effing do something in your name. And just really just had a sort of a guttural scream that I was just like, this is I'm going to turn this negative into something really, really positive.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
And that's that's what started the acceleration of everything I do.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
The thing is with animal care facilities, I love anybody who's working in charity. I love anybody who's trying to help animals. One person adopting a dog is my hero because they're saving one dog's life. A medium-sized charity, large charities, we should all be working together because it's a common goal. I'm not going to be able to fix it on my own.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
I think we do things a little differently in Happy Doggo. We're trying to
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
tackle the root problem and get at the cause of it and really make change in my lifetime for these dogs but i have so much respect for everybody who helps any type of animals and the more we can work together and change opinions and harass friends into adopting dogs rather than buying you know uh special dogs it's a real team effort to change the welfare of dogs around the world
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
Yeah, I mean, I started my life in the corporate world and I actually escaped to Thailand when I sold my business. I wanted to sort of lie on the beach and relax. But unfortunately, I actually was an alcoholic and I nearly drank myself to death. So I ended up in ICU in hospital, really rock bottom, nearly, you know, literally nearly drank myself to death. And
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
Yeah, I think it's achievable. I think that numbers need to up it because we sterilize between five and eight thousand every month now. So that's a huge amount. Each one of those is an operation where you have to sedate them. the vets operate on them.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
And that means that mothers like Tina won't have, she probably had 40, 50 puppies in her lifetime that were sold, but each operation stops that happening to 40 or 50 dogs coming into the world. So we're doing, you know, five to 8,000 of those every month. So that adds up to nearly a hundred thousand dogs stopped coming into the world every month because of sterilizing. So
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
I think a million is conservative. I think we can we can speed things up. Obviously, it takes marketing, funding, you know, logistics, really tough things like that. But I'll do it in Tina's name.
The Excerpt
Saving one abused dog at a time in Thailand
I had to rethink my life completely when I was lying in that hospital bed. And I decided that my mission would become to save dogs if I was lucky enough to survive. And I did survive. And that's what I've gone on to do.