The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs
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This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Rachel Wright, and in this edition... 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.
I meet this man who's helped thousands of stray dogs in Thailand, two childhood sweethearts reunited after more than 85 years.
All these years just passed, and then suddenly we got in touch again. And... I looked at the text and I thought to myself, like, history? Like, what are you talking about? And then that's when it clicked in my head for a second. I was like, OK, maybe this is kind of a big deal.
Who is helping Thailand's street dogs?
An historic moment in college basketball. Meet the first player with one arm to score during a game. We begin with the story of a man in Thailand who's become an online celebrity after sharing his stories of the abandoned street dogs he's fed, rehomed and treated. Niall Harbison lives on the island of Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand. His story begins when he himself was in a bad place, recovering in hospital from alcohol poisoning. He decided to turn his life around. and began to befriend some of the island's many stray dogs, and that became his mission, to fix the global street dog problem. At his rehabilitation centre on the island, he works tirelessly to improve the dogs' lives, feeding, grooming, treating and sterilising, which doesn't sound that pleasant, but Niall says that will save many more dogs from being born on the street. While on holiday in Thailand myself last month, I went to visit him and met some of his four-legged friends.
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.
This is one of Niall Harbison's daily updates on his Instagram page about the trials and tribulations of his dog rescue centre on Koa Samui. That dog he's just met, with very short legs and a big head, he's named Tom Cruise. When he was first found, he was covered in oil and blood-sucking ticks with a back leg just hanging off his body. Over the past three years, Niall has fed, treated and rehomed thousands of dogs.
Lovely to be able to jump in there.
He picked me up from outside a supermarket in a truck emblazoned with his happy doggo logo and took me up Hope Avenue to what he calls the land.
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. But we wanted to make it nice for the dogs and for the people.
So it feels happy.
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. 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.
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