On December 31, 2020, Niall Harbison admitted himself to a hospital in Thailand after nearly drinking himself to death. At the time, Harbison, then 41 and an alcoholic, had been consuming wine and taking Valium for his depression and anxiety.
“I’ve been drinking for two months, and I was drinking maybe four or more bottles of wine a day and three to four Valiums,” Harbison, now 44, who had earlier moved from Ireland to Thailand’s Koh Samui island, tells PEOPLE. “I’d broken up with a girlfriend. COVID was on, and I had nothing to do and nobody to tell me to stop. It just continued for two months. And then, one morning, I had to wake up and go to the hospital. I couldn’t function. I was drinking whiskey, which I’d never really drank in my life. So my body just broke down, and I was in ICU for 3-4 days.”
Three and a half years later, Harbison, a former chef and tech entrepreneur, is a changed and sober man thanks to his new mission: feeding and caring for street dogs, primarily in Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia, through his organization Happy Doggo.
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“When you’re an alcoholic,” says Harbison, “you might be unreliable, or you’ve missed people’s phone calls, and you make excuses to go for a drink. You’re too selfish. You do what’s best for you to get the next drink. Now that I work for other creatures or dogs, I feel good about myself.”
Niall Harbison/X
Happy Doggo took root after Harbison was discharged from the hospital in January 2021 and tried to figure out what to do with his life.
“Even after [leaving the hospital], for a month, it was horrific,” he says. “But I had decided in hospital, ‘If I get out of here, that’s it.'”
“It was a pretty brutal, brutal time,” he adds. “I was like, ‘If I drink again, I’m going to die. I don’t want to do that.'”
Harbison’s perspective started to turn during a jog one day when he noticed a malnourished dog, whom he later named Lucky. He remembered Lucky looking sad. “I was like, ‘Right, I’m going to stop in the 7-Eleven on the way home and get her some food,'” he remembers. “And I did. She was still there, and she loved the food. That made me feel good as well about myself.”
Niall Harbison/Substack
He also knew that Lucky was going to need food again. “So I went back the next day, and that’s literally how I started,” Harbison says of Happy Doggo’s origins. “And then it just jumped to four dogs. Then it was eight and then 20, and it just grew.”
Harbison posted images and clips of the street dogs he fed on social media to draw more widespread attention to their plight.
Niall Harbison/X
According to Harbison, there are about 8 million street dogs in Thailand. “There are dogs on every corner. They have a very tough life, and they do get fed. But [in terms of] medical care, it’s nothing like people’s pets at home.”
Steadily, the number of dogs Harbison was feeding reached the hundreds. “I was like, ‘Why don’t I just get a local lady to make all the food for us that would be much cheaper, much healthier?'” he remembers. “So I did that, and then that’s how we got up to 800 dogs every day. And then we started doing medical care, and it just grew into a charity [Happy Doggo].”
Niall Harbison/X
Happy Doggo’s primary goals are to get Thailand’s street dogs spayed and neutered and help them stay fed and loved. “We’ve got teams all over Thailand with people out on the road catching them and then bringing them in for operations,” says Harbison. “I’m trying to harness that kindness and save as many dogs as possible.”
To help with their efforts, Happy Doggo now has a sanctuary in Koh Samui to treat dogs with serious conditions from broken bones to cancer, and a hospital is currently under construction as well.
“The dogs have their own little paradise in the middle of the jungle,” Harbison says, “But it’s only the sickest ones. And then we adopt out some of them. We’ve done 25 this year.”
Niall Harbison/X
Harbison once said his goal is to reduce the world’s street dog population from 500 million to 250 million. He admits to PEOPLE that the objective is “crazy,” but he thinks it can be done.
“We’re doing 5,000 [spay/neuter surgeries] a month already, so this year our staff will save 500,000 dogs,” he explains. “That’s how many won’t be born because of the sterilizing we’re doing. ”
“It’s going to take my whole life,” Harbison says of reaching his 250 million goal. “I’m 44, so maybe I have 30 years left if I stay healthy. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s a good mission to have.”
Harbison says he sees something of himself in the street dogs he helps, which motivates him to assist even more.
“I see some of them down on their knees broken, and then I can see them coming back once they’ve been given a chance in life. I feel so lucky to be alive. And I see that in them as well. Some of them have been chained up on a short chain, and suddenly, we take the chain off them, and I’m like, ‘That is what I feel.’ I have their chain taken off me.”
