This was what happened before my very eyes on Wednesday, when I spent the day at our Midlands Centre.

I’d left Sussex early, to beat the traffic, and for once in my life that’s what actually happened, so I arrived at our Leicestershire site in good time. In such good time, in fact, that I caught the end of one puppy class and the start of another. And as I walked from one to the other, I passed brand new recruit puppy Hugo, cute and cuddly at eight weeks’ old, coming for a quick socialisation visit in the arms of his puppy parent Lynden. Bless! I also bumped into Neil who is puppy-training young Velo, who is going through a more teenage stage, being nine months’ old. Hugo will get to that stage one day too, don’t you worry!

Meanwhile in the puppy arena, the second puppy class of the morning was in full flow, with trainer Julia leading the proceedings. I saw young five month old golden retriever Della doing some beautiful obedience exercises, with her puppy parent Kathleen smiling at her constantly, as if she couldn’t quite believe how good she was being (she describes Della as a bit of a cheeky monkey at home, but we don’t believe her!).

Then it was Basil’s turn to have a go at sitting still while his puppy parent Sandra left him in a ‘wait’ and moved around the room, sitting in different chairs. As a young eight month old goldendoodle this is not something that comes naturally to him, and it is testament to Sandra and husband John’s hard work that he’s progressing so well. The class finished off with everyone practising their obedience exercises from a chair, so that the puppies can start getting an insight into their future lives as assistance dogs, where they will most likely be partnered with people who use wheelchairs.

And then it was that the concrete floors appeared! Just like that, out of the blue! These are the floors of our next major project at our Midlands site, which is to build Residential Accommodation that is specially adapted for disabled people. The concrete mixer dumped its load; the special smoothing machine (to use its technical term) worked its magic; and hey presto! Suddenly the whole of the new building had a first layer of concrete flooring! And it was still only lunchtime. It really is amazing what progress can be made when the big machinery gets to work. What we really need now is your help to enable us to finish off this project so please do get your thinking caps on, to help us raise sufficient funds to finish it off. We really want disabled people living in the Midlands to have their very own completed and fully functioning training centre, so let’s do it!

Having recovered from the excitement of watching concrete dry (it’s much better than paint), I wended my way back to Sussex, to get back to the day job, but still with renewed determination to crack on with our project in the Midlands. We really are going through exciting times here at Canine Partners and we are so lucky to have such a brilliant family of supporters helping us along the way. Thank you for everything you are doing!

Onwards and upwards

Andy