My wife devoted her life to stray dogs in Thailand ..and one even starred in Britain’s Got Talent

BOOK TELLS AMAZING TRUE STO

John has now helped to write a book about Gill’s incredible life, which will be released next month.

It describes her passion for animals and tells how she lost both her legs while saving a dog from a paddy field in 2004.

Just days after Gill was released from hospital her best friend Leone Cosens, 51, died in the Boxing Day tsunami, which killed more than 225,000 people in 14 countries.

Leone’s dream was to establish a shelter where the street dogs of Thailand could be cared for – so in memory of her friend, Gill went on to establish the biggest dog sanctuary in Asia.

The Soi Dog Foundation has now treated almost half a million animals.

It has also played a vital role in lobbying governments across Asia to end the cruel dog meat trade.

John said: “Gill was an incredible person – the bravest I’ve ever met. I didn’t know what grief was until I lost her. When she lost her legs in 2004, I was prepared to end our work with dogs but she was having none of it.

“The doctor who treated her in Bangkok said he and his colleagues had no idea how she survived. He said, ‘You must have something you still have to do here’. She said, ‘I do’.”

Many of the dogs cared for by the charity have gone on to find happy homes in the UK.

Miracle was adopted by

Amanda Leask, from Inverness, who recently appeared alongside him on hit ITV show BGT.

But if it had not been for the foundation, Miracle – and many other stray dogs like him – would have met a grisly end.

Gill was determined to help Thai street dogs after holidaying in Phuket in 2001. She and John fell in love with a dog that slept on their hotel veranda – but had disappeared by the morning.

The couple spent hours trying to find him, only to discover he had been beaten to death by locals desperate to control Phuket’s stray population.

At the time, around 70,000 homeless dogs and cats were living on the island.

Gill was distraught – and in 2003, she gave up her job in a bank and moved to Phuket permanently to help.

John, who had worked on a chemical plant, said: “After that, we wanted to do something about the dogs. That was part of our motivation for moving to Thailand.

“We started going round the island and seeing all these stray dogs. We were shocked at first.

“Most were emaciated through malnutrition. Many had mange and were covered in sores. Some had open wounds which could have been caused by road accidents, dog fights or human cruelty. They were living on the streets without anyone to care for them. We wanted to find a solution to improve their lives but the scale of the problem was just so overwhelming.”

The couple started off running a mobile shelter manned by volunteer vets in an attempt to neuter dogs and control the street population humanely.

In September 2004, Gill had just administered a sedative to a stray he darted off towards a rice padd

Knowing that the dog was ab collapse and drown, Gill ran after

John said: “Gill managed to dr dog back to the road, where the was waiting. She was pretty run do the time as she’d had a fall ch