Locals already familiar with Becca will likely associate her foremost with Baan Maa – the Dog House - her dog rescue and welfare organisation. It is her pet project, born out of desire for “compassion in action”. Becca is currently housing, caring for and helping heal 17 dogs and contributing to local soi dog welfare by providing much needed funds for veterinary care as well as rehoming and adoption services. While there are quite a number of organisations in this line of work in this part of Thailand, Becca and Baan Maa stand out because she does much more than work with dogs in need. One of her superpowers lies in her stated desire and ability to collaborate with other agencies, rather than compete for the charity baht. Becca firmly believes that “there is always enough to go around if you’re doing the right things by the animals. She is almost as proud of her achievement with Baan Maa as she is of her parenting of her lovely son Luca, whose kind nature and fine behaviour are often the basis of compliments from the local community.

Becca has a thorough pedigree when it comes to animal welfare, having worked with some of the largest and most high-profile organisations in Thailand.  While this experience is invaluable, it is something of a double-edged sword. Becca knows she is doing a sterling job and would love, at least with part of her head and heart, to expand Baan Maa to a larger block of land already owned by her Thai husband Jok, so the pair could deal with the needs of even more dogs. Yet a fear of the spotlight holds her back. Greater success would mean she would be approached for assistance with greater frequency, meaning she would be heartbroken at having to turn away those in need even more often.

Becca was born in Paisley in Scotland and raised in both Scotland and England, the family moving to Northampton when she was just two. Becca fondly recalls Northampton’s hot air balloon festival with its roaring, colourful sky creatures and its accompanying fun fair. Perhaps the most defining characteristic of her birth family, both nuclear and extended, is their closeness. Even today, as a wife and mother, having built a family of her own, Becca receives a call from her mother during her mother’s morning commute, usually followed later in the day by a catch-up call with her dad. It is clear that Becca’s parents take their roles in her life seriously still, despite living half a world away. Becca was the family’s second daughter, the child of two working parents. Her father is an entrepreneur who took quickly to the new opportunities e-commerce provided, working with web design and then artificial intelligence. Both sisters were keen to get part-time employment in their teen years. Becca’s sister sold Avon products but Becca was content to learn, and earn, from her parents; the more technical aspects of business from her father and the administrative and managerial aspects from her mother.

After finishing high school, Becca was keen to experience a gap year, choosing to apply to Project Trust, a leading charity on the Isle of Coll in the Hebrides, which offered fully supported international volunteering opportunities. Its aim was to empower young school-leavers to develop their confidence, resilience, awareness and leadership skills through working abroad, usually in a remote, rural setting, in community care work and education, providing a first-hand experience of cultural exchange and the challenges of global issues and human rights. Becca took part in a lengthy selection and training process across many months, with no guarantee that she would meet Project Trust’s stringent criteria for the offer of a placement, returning home to await the letter which would determine the outcome of all her efforts. She jumped for joy upon confirmation that she was bound for a year in the small village of Wakapou in Guyana, the only English-speaking country in South America, all the while hearing her father’s repeated, “She’s not going” reverberating through the home. 

After her fruitful time abroad, Becca returned to Glasgow and enrolled in a year-long access program to secure a placement at the University of Glasgow the following year. An avid history lover, Becca pictured herself teaching history or working in a museum or a castle and so chose to study medieval and Scottish history and language, topics polar opposite to her recent, raw experience of life in remote, rural, subsistence-level Wakapou. To her profound surprise, Becca found the sterile environment of the lecture theatre sucked away all her previous passion for history. Just a year into her degree, dissatisfied with her grades, Becca de-enrolled herself and only then told her parents that she was dropping out, with the intention of pursuing a further volunteering opportunity, a mere eight weeks, in 2015 at WFFT, the Wildlife Friends Foundation in Petchaburi in Thailand.

Of course, this was to be just the very beginning of Becca’s Thailand saga, with her now the wife of a Thai man, mother to a bi-racial son and responsible for the welfare of a multitude of dogs. It will likely raise a smile for readers too, to learn that Becca’s husband is Jok, the name pronounced almost identically to the well-known Scottish name Jock, and that he happily and proudly wears a kilt on any appropriate occasion, including the couple’s wedding day. Fate, it seems, was at play when the pair first met and became firm friends at WFFT, where Jok was working as a mahout. Becca’s mother quickly became aware that her daughter would not be coming home in just a couple of months. Another one who understood all too clearly the growing relationship between Becca and Jok was the elephant with which he had bonded. Becca has a healthy respect for elephants, aware that confrontations with the powerful animals can prove deadly if the elephant feels provoked or threatened. Jok’s elephant displayed all the signs of a scorned lover, spraying water and throwing stones at Becca in a deliberate attempt at tempting Becca to approach without caution. Not many women have to face the wrath of a jealous ex who happens to be an elephant!

In Thailand, Becca has had the ideal opportunity to put into practice all the skills and personal qualities she developed during her ground-breaking first experience abroad in Guyana, along with the learning she had made from her parents. Becca has fielded a wide variety of tasks, from teaching children English, volunteer mentoring, to animal rescue, organisational social media management, marketing, website development and animal adoption strategies. She has become her own “Jok of all trades”, self-empowering for the final step of creating Baan Maa to her own distinctive design, yet still willing to assist others such as the Adoptable Puppy Café through her business, Carving Mountains, which provides expertise in web design and the use of AI chatbots to maximise an organisation’s media effectiveness. Becca is certainly making her unique mark, playing to her adaptability. She recently received a Facebook compliment from a person who told her she had made a huge impact on them and their mindset back in 2014. Such a re-enforcement that her efforts are making a positive change is a challenging world.

This part of Thailand has the perfect balance for Becca and her family, allowing her to indulge in the multicultural and somewhat more cosmopolitan aspects of Hua Hin, while retiring to her country home amongst the rice fields when she yearns for serenity and respite from the global issues many are finding confronting. It is Becca’s innate compassion which makes all forms of suffering difficult to witness. Becca has embraced spontaneity and now likes to focus on finding joy in the small, everyday things rather than focusing on larger, bucket-list goals which many never be achieved. While taking Jok and Luca on a grand European vacation would be nice, Becca is content with a few days camping in Kaeng Krachan National Park. 

When Becca has free time to relax, she and Luca are likely to be found in the kitchen baking. She admits to a sweet tooth. Becca’s phone is full of a curious mix of screen-shots of recipes, photos of horrific dog injuries and cute pictures of her canine charges that she uses to construct light-hearted social media reels to spread a little joy and hold back the darker reality of her daily work. Each freshly baked cake, cookie or even a simple margarita pizza brings a smile to both Becca and Luca. On the other hand, people who waste time whinging about things they could easily change will elicit a frown. Becca’s most admired person is her mother, who has always been available and responsive to Becca’s needs, and Becca tries to pass on this caring to every living being she encounters.

Glencoe in the rugged Scottish Highlands remains Becca’s favourite place on earth and her family knows that is eventually where her ashes are to be taken. In the meantime, her daily walks with the dogs along the edges of the rice fields to the pond for a romp in the water are sufficient to fill her with nature’s awe, thankful she is able to live an extraordinary life, full of passion and determination.