Niall Harbison regularly looks after the many stray dogs roaming the streets in Thailand. But when he saw Cindy, he knew she needed help right away. The dog was so overweight she couldn’t stand up or walk. Niall decided to take her to a vet right away, who was worried about her heart. Cindy weighed 97 pounds (44 kilograms) when she needed to weigh closer to 50 pounds (24 kilos).
Lana Chapman, one of the volunteers with Niall’s rescue, Happy Doggo, became Cindy’s personal trainer. The first goal was to get Cindy to walk 30 steps a day. Cindy would tire quickly and often had to sit down after just a few steps. But slowly, she started getting better.
Cindy got regular weigh-ins, and two months after she began exercising, Cindy could walk at a quicker pace, and she weighed under 40 kg. Three months after her rescue, she was running to the scale! Now, after nine months of persistence, Cindy lost the 45 pounds of weight she needed to shed, and her fur is healthier. Niall says, “Her fur is thick and bushy compared to her painful blotted skin when she came in.”
He writes on Instagram, “I’ll never forget her broken spirit and trying to lift her off the road outside 7-11 back in September 2023. The cars were whizzing past her head, and she just wanted it to all end. Look at her now.” He also shared the happy news that Lana is now Cindy’s mom! He writes that Cindy is “the best girl ever, and she has the wonderful life away from the streets that she always deserved.”