SOM JÛD - her name is Thai for “Orange Spot” - a reference to her lovely white and ginger coat.

Help us give Som Jûd a forever home!! Owen and I have been travelling in South East Asia for coming up to a year now and in that time we have met countless stray dogs, some in good shape and some very much not. Fleas, mange, car accidents and malnutrition are just some of the most common issues strays face continent wide.

We volunteered at the fantastic Sangkhlaburi Animal Sanctuary in Thailand for 2 months in total and enjoyed making a difference to a small number of dogs’ lives, including their resident pooches and the 100s of cats and dogs we assisted at spay camps, to neuter many local dogs, helping keep the dog and cat populations under control.

In this time, we fell in love….with Som Jûd.

She’s an energetic tripod with so much love to give. She’ll roll over for a belly rub for pretty much anyone. She was a street dog living outside a 7-Eleven convenience shop in the town, begging for food from kind Thai locals. The sanctuary caught and spayed her, releasing her back out once she’d recovered (healthy dogs are ok to stay on the street and sadly they can’t take all dogs in). But sadly a few months later, Som Jûd was brought back to the clinic after having one of her legs shattered to pieces. She had fallen asleep on the curb with her back leg protruding into the road and it was run over. The leg was far too broken to save and she had to have it amputated, so now lives as a 3 legged dog!

Although she has a lovely life at the sanctuary socialising with dogs and volunteers alike, it’s a small and sheltered existence. With the staff stretched looking after the resident pups and the on-site clinic, she gets only one 20 minute walk a day and won’t know life beyond the sanctuary unless we can raise the funds to adopt her.

When we volunteered, we took a liking to her straight away, and the feeling was mutual. I don’t know if it was the leftover yoghurt pots every morning or the fact we let her in our bed almost every night, but by the end of our time volunteering we knew she was destined to be our dog. Leaving her at the sanctuary was one of the hardest things we’ve done. We feel like we’ve left our dog in another country and want to do everything we can to bring her to a forever home!

As you can imagine, the process is long and costly. We need to pay for her blood tests with the limited funds we had saved for our travels and then she needs to go on a flight with a flight volunteer over to Paris, to then finally drive her to her new home in Brighton.

It will cost approximately the below:

With enough funds and if timelines work out, we hope to have her home with us by summer, especially as we think it might be a shock for her going from the warmth of Thailand to English weather!!

Any small amount would be greatly appreciated. If you know Owen and I, you’ll know we’re dog mad and have dreamed of having our own for so long. We suspected we might fall in love with a street dog (or 10), but didn’t think we’d be mad enough to try and bring one home!

Your help would make our dream come true and give a Thai street dog the most amazing and fulfilled life. If any money is left over from the cost of bringing her over, this will of course be donated directly to the sanctuary to keep funding the dogs who aren’t lucky enough to get adopted and the amazing work done in the free clinic.

Thank you so much

Megan, Owen and Som Jud xx