23/09/2026
When I started Underdog, I had a very clear idea of what I wanted it to be.
I believed that bringing children and dogs together could genuinely change lives on both sides. Dogs could help children build confidence, empathy and connection, and children could learn to understand, respect and care for animals.
So we built Underdog around three things: therapy, education and rescue, and set ourselves a pretty ambitious target of helping one million children and dogs.
We’ve now reached 1,097,916.
That first phase hasn’t always been straightforward. Covid, Brexit, war and the cost-of-living crisis all changed the landscape around us, and we had to adapt more than once.
But the idea at the heart of Underdog never changed.
Children helping dogs. Dogs helping children.
And behind that one-million figure are thousands of individual stories: children finding confidence, families welcoming rescue dogs, classrooms learning about kindness and welfare, and volunteers coming home from projects seeing things differently.
Reaching one million feels like a big moment. Now the ambition is to take everything we’ve learned and go much further.
Nadine 🧡
