MODEL Rosie Jones and her Page 3 colleagues pose with Red the dog – who does not know how lucky he is, twice over.
For not only is the cute mutt in the company of a bevy of glamour girls, he is also one of thousands of hounds that have been saved from being butchered for Thailand’s cruel dog meat industry.
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Earlier this year animal lover Rosie spent a fortnight at the Soi Dog sanctuary in Phuket looking after dozens of strays and stolen pets which the charity had rescued from a grisly end on a Thai dinner table.
She says: “When I told the rest of the girls, who all have dogs, we just knew we had to do something to help. It’s such a big problem over there.”
Rosie admits she had no idea that dogs were eaten in parts of South East Asia until her mum Aileen saw a tweet by Ricky Gervais, one of the charity’s celebrity supporters, last January.
Rosie, 25, from Middlesex, says: “We read an article about it and that very same day booked our flights out there to volunteer.
“I was a bit worried I’d find it really sad and emotional but it was amazing, a really happy place.
“I was given a large pen with about 24 dogs in and spent the next two weeks walking them, playing with them and cuddling them to get them ready for adoption.
“Many are scared of humans as they’ve been treated so cruelly so you have to win their trust again.”
Soi Dog — soi means “street” in Thai — cares for around 400 dogs in Phuket and around 1,500 at its shelter in the town of Buriram, north east of Bangkok.
Many go on to live with locals but every year more than 250 are also adopted around the world, mainly in Europe and America.
Red — Yai Daeng in Thai — now lives in South East London after spending five years with the charity, which was set up by Brits John and Gill Dalley in 2003.
They had retired to Phuket, where they were disturbed by the huge number of emaciated and sick animals on the holiday island.
They started a neutering programme and established a rescue centre, not even stopping when Gill, now 56, lost both her legs — and nearly her life — to a virulent infection which she picked up by wading into a flooded field to save a dog.
In 2011, they launched a campaign to end the meat trade in the north east of Thailand, which saw up to half a million dogs — mainly stolen pets — rounded up and transported over the border to Laos and Vietnam.
Packed in tiny cages, up to 1,600 on a truck, many die of suffocation and dehydration before they reach their destination.
And they are the lucky ones.
Rosie says: “The others are often tortured and cooked alive because the people believe that if an animal dies in pain, the meat will taste better.
“I don’t understand how they can have no conscience about doing that to a living animal.”
Soi Dog believes the trade has almost been eradicated from Thailand but is still working with other British organisations, including the company Palms2Paws, to stop it in neighbouring Laos and Vietnam.
Their efforts led to the British Government last month pledging to step up its efforts to get it banned worldwide.
Meanwhile Rosie — who also met dog meat trade survivors Odie, Baki and Fay at their new home in West Sussex earlier this year — will be going back to help at Soi Dog again in 2016.
This time not only will her mum join her but also her sister Molly, 20.
Rosie, who has two French bulldogs, Reggie and Milo, says: “It’s so incredible to see the journey the dogs go on from being rescued in a terrible state to being nursed back to health and adopted all over the world.
“And I can’t wait to see my favourite again — three-legged Brick, who’s been there for five years.”
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