Samuel Cycles the World
Paws Around
the World
One shelter. One dog. One story. In every country he passes.

"It's sad that they don't have a home."

Samuël, on why he wants to do this
77Shelters
25+Countries
18Months
0Middlemen
The mission
Every dog deserves a home

In every country Samuël cycles through he stops at a local animal shelter, and in some cities at more than one. Seventy seven along the whole route. He films one dog, learns their name, and tells their story in his own words.

Donations are not the point. Adoptions are. Samuël hopes that every dog he films ends up somewhere warm with people who wanted them. Money helps a shelter keep going. A home changes everything.

No money ever passes through us. Whatever anyone gives goes straight to the people looking after that dog, in their own country and their own currency.

The process
Four steps, and none of
them involve our bank account
1
He arrives
At a shelter somewhere on the route, in a town most travellers ride straight past.
2
He films one dog
One animal. Their name, how long they have waited, what they are like. Filmed by a twelve year old, not a camera crew.
3
Their code goes with it
The shelter's own QR code, or a link to their page. Theirs, not ours. We never make one for them.
4
Then he rides on
To the next country and the next shelter. What happens to that dog after we leave is up to whoever watched the film.
The part nobody sees
Send us a photo
from the sofa

Every story about shelter dogs ends the same way. You see the dog behind the fence, you feel something, and then it stops. You never find out what happened.

Did you adopt a dog you first saw in one of these films? Send us a photo. Where they sleep now, what they are like once they stop being scared, what you ended up calling them. By then we will be three countries further down the road, so we cannot come and see for ourselves.

We will share it with everyone who watched that dog wait. One photo from a living room says more than anything we could film ourselves.

Every dog also gets a place on The Dogs, a page that starts empty on 15 November and fills up one dog at a time. Adopted ones get their sofa photo next to the shelter photo. The rest keep waiting there until somebody turns up.

The real goal
You could be the reason
this dog gets adopted

A healthy dog gets noticed. A noticed dog gets adopted. That is the chain, and it starts with somebody seeing them at all.

Someone gives
Straight to the shelter. Food, care, a visit from a vet.
The dog gets seen
A healthy dog in a film is a dog somebody can imagine at home.
A home
And if it happens, the new family sends a photo and everyone gets to see it.
If you run a shelter
We would rather
be invited

We are riding from Málaga through Morocco, Europe, Turkey, Asia and beyond, looking for shelters along that road. Not the biggest ones. The ones nobody films.

If you look after dogs somewhere on that route, write to us. Tell us where you are. If we can reach you, we will come.

There are four ways
to make this work
Not all of them cost anything, and the free ones are often worth more.
1Watch and share. A film that gets passed on reaches somebody who was already thinking about a dog.
2Give to a shelter directly when a dog stays on your mind after the film ends.
3Point us at a shelter you know that sits on the route, especially a small one.
4Adopt one of them, and then send us a photo so everybody sees how it ended.
Follow the dogs →
samuelcyclestheworld.com · @samuelcyclestheworld