Do you know how much people like you did last year?

John Dalley, Soi Dog Foundation<john.dalley@soidog.org>

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Dear, Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the overwhelming number of kind wishes I received after the recent passing of my wife and Soi Dog co-founder, Gill. I want to take this opportunity to share with you some of the huge successes made possible by people like you during the last year and which Gill was so very proud of. She knew that the power we have to change things is truly magnified when we all come together. In 2016, people like you helped thousands of suffering animals   It was another busy year of rescuing sick, injured, abused and abandoned animals that would otherwise have died alone on the streets. Not only are we focusing on Bangkok and Phuket and its neighbouring provinces, but in addition, we are carrying out special projects such as on the isolated island of Koh Kood, which lies off the coast of Cambodia, where we sterilised virtually all 700 homeless dogs on the island. Our support for other shelters across Thailand also grew, with the addition of some new shelters that we are now supplying with food and medical and sterilisation services. Without this support, made possible by people like you, the dogs would have starved to death.  Thanks to support from animal lovers around the world, our reach extends far beyond our base here on the island of Phuket. One notable example occurred in Samut Prakhan province. The moment I first heard about a young pup named Cola being viciously attacked will always stay with me. Only about a year old and behaving in typical puppy fashion, he was caught chewing a neighbour’s shoes. Retribution was swift and horrific – the neighbour chopped off Cola’s two front paws with a sword. It truly was one of the most unbelievably vicious attacks I have ever heard of. Cola when found, his two front legs savagely hacked off Losing huge amounts of blood, and with his life in danger, Cola was rushed to a specialist clinic with Soi Dog Foundation agreeing to cover the costs. It is only people like you who make this possible and that support was instrumental in saving his life. Cola had to undergo surgery to save what remained of his legs and once he had fully healed, kind donations from animal lovers like you meant he could be fitted with prosthetics. This development truly gave him back his freedom and changed his life. Cola now lives with me and enjoys daily walks on the nearby beach. I am so grateful for everything people like you have achieved for him. Cola taking a break on the beach Another very special animal that entered our lives this year was Clops, a tiny, scared little kitten, who was missing one eye when a compassionate taxi driver found her and drove her to our shelter. We will never know what trauma caused Clops to lose her eye and end up vulnerable and alone on the streets, but what I do see every day is the difference the members of our Care for Cats Club have made for her. Clops on arrival at our shelter Safe, loved, and ready for a home Thanks to them, we were able to take her in, provide her with something to eat, and a comfortable place to sleep, and she is now safe at our shelter until that special forever home comes along. If you love cats, will you please become a member of the Care for Cats Club so that more cats and kittens like Clops can be helped? Launch of the Bangkok mobile sterilisation programme 2016 was a record year for our spay/neuter activities with a total of 34,241 animals sterilised thanks to you. I am very pleased to announce that we have now reached a milestone of over 135,000 animals sterilised in total. In the coming year, this figure will no doubt rise significantly thanks to the expansion of our Bangkok mobile sterilisation programme. With an estimated 640,000 stray dogs roaming the streets of Bangkok, this is an incredibly important step in tackling the problem. Soi Dog Foundation firmly believes that spaying and neutering is the only humane and efficient solution to reducing street dog numbers in the long term. Eventually, the plan is to have ten mobile clinics operating across the Bangkok metropolitan area, sterilising 100,000 dogs a year. The project is expected to take at least seven years to complete and would never have been possible without people like you. If you would like to help, please click here to prevent millions of unwanted animals being born into a lifetime of misery on the streets. One of the Bangkok mobile teams in action Thailand's first ever hospital for street dogs opened its doors In September, after years in the planning, I am so happy that Gill was able to see her dream coming true as Thailand’s first ever hospital for street dogs opened at our shelter. After years of operating with limited facilities, having to transport sick and injured animals off-site for specialist treatment and/or x-rays, I cannot thank our supporters enough for making this possible. The hospital’s state of the art equipment, complete with x-ray and hydrotherapy facilities, means suffering street dogs can now get the treatment they need and deserve. We look forward to saving many more lives in the wonderful facility that will ensure Gill's legacy lives on. Our vet monitors her charges in Thailand's first ever hospital for street dogs Progress in the fight against the Asian dog meat trade Thanks to our supporters, the illegal dog meat trade in Thailand has been decimated, although we continue to shut down small-time operators and rescue their victims. The most recent rescue was a precious family of 8 dogs who now live in safety at our shelter. Simba, Elsa, and Elsa's pups, all saved from the dog meat trade Hundreds of dog meat trade survivors have now been adopted and, with the decline in the trade in this country, this means more space has been freed up at Buriram, the Soi Dog-funded shelter where the rescued dogs are housed. Recently, another government shelter at Thon Pha Phum announced that it was closing its doors and the logical decision was to move the estimated 600 dogs from there to Buriram. Many of these dogs are also survivors of the Thai dog meat trade and Soi Dog Foundation has been supplying them with food for years, thanks to support from people like you. These dogs will now enter our adoption programme with partner rescues in the US & Canada, which has proved very successful to date. Towards the end of 2016, we were made aware of nearly 100 dogs that had been rescued from the Yulin dog meat festival in China, that were still stuck in the country, despite having been offered foster or permanent homes in the US. The dogs had been rescued by volunteer activists who did not have the funds to get them out of China and Soi Dog Foundation was asked to assist. Thanks to the generous response from animal lovers like you, I am pleased to say that nearly all the dogs are now out of China and safely in the US. The final remaining dogs, including some puppies born to dogs that were pregnant at Yulin, will all be moved in the coming weeks. Some of the Yulin rescues, on their way to the U.S. Meanwhile, our fight against the trade in Indonesia, Vietnam, and South Korea continues. We recently launched a petition against the horrendous “meat dog” farms of South Korea. South Korea is the last country in the world where dogs are bred for their meat and we are determined to stop it. Millions of puppies are crammed into tiny, filthy cages and kept there until they are big enough to be slaughtered. They have never seen daylight or felt soft grass beneath their feet – this is their life from the day they are born. If you have not already signed the petition, I urge you to do so now by clicking here. Our advertising campaign in the Moran market area has helped lead to the authorities banning the sale and slaughter of live dogs in Korea’s most notorious market. A Soi Dog-funded poster on a bus in South Korea. Click here to fund more. I recently had a very positive meeting with Mr. Pyo, the leading Korean politician who is pushing for changes to the animal welfare laws in Korea to put pressure on the industry. In December, we sponsored a Vietnamese television crew to make a series of programmes on the Vietnamese dog and cat meat industries exposing the cruelty and health issues, and the first programme is scheduled to be broadcast on Vietnamese national TV this month. With our partners in ACPA, we are training local rescue groups on how to care for animals that the authorities may intercept. In Indonesia, support from people like you meant we were able to finance an undercover investigation into the trade there and will be meeting with local groups in February to discuss ways of ending the industry in that country.  The visitors and volunteers keep coming I am delighted to say that 2016 was a very busy year in terms of hosting visitors and volunteers at our shelter, who came from all corners of the world to learn more and see how they could help. December in particular was a record month, with a total of 520 visitors to the shelter and an incredible 42 volunteers walking and socialising the animals in our care. Our shelter tours, which normally take place four times a day, were increased to six times a day, with many working through their lunch break to ensure visitors could be accommodated. If you have not already visited our shelter, I do hope to welcome you in 2017! Hundreds of animals found their forever homes this year A total of 555 dogs and cats found their forever homes this year. Many of these animals would have lived on the streets all their lives. They would have never known the security of a loving home so I am overjoyed that so many have found loving families all over the world. One such dog is Pantiter, who has truly defied the odds. Suffering from neurological problems and muscular atrophy when rescued from the streets, he was shockingly emaciated. The moment I first met Pantiter Our vets voiced their concerns that he wasn’t going to make it, but Pantiter had other ideas. And thanks to people like you funding all his vital medical treatment and months of after-care, this incredible survivor made it. After all he has overcome, you can imagine my joy when news that Pantiter had been adopted reached me. A few months ago, this big strong boy enjoyed the first of many Christmases to come in a loving home in Florida, and people like you have made similar dreams come true for hundreds of other rescued animals this year. Pantiter snoozing after a long walk What incredible achievements have been made possible in the last year by people like you! If you would like to be a part of saving yet more animals in 2017, please commit to a monthly donation by clicking here if you have not already done so. Thank you on behalf of all the animals whose lives will be changed this year because of you. I know how grateful Gill would be for your support and I wish you a peaceful and happy 2017. John Dalley Co-Founder, Soi Dog Foundation P.S. With people like you fighting their corner in 2017, the suffering animals of Asia have a chance of rescue, rehabilitation and re-homing. Please click here to help them because they have nobody else.

© Copyright 2017 The Soi Dog Foundation.