International Women’s Day: Celebrating the women behind our beginnings
Posted 8 hours ago
Over 35 years ago, the vision of two inspiring women led to the founding of Canine Partners. Today, we celebrate the women who paved the way and those who continue to shape our charity’s future.
Canine Partners started in 1990, thanks to two amazing women, Anne Conway and Dr. Elizabeth Ormerod. They had a simple but powerful idea: to use the incredible abilities of dogs to help people with physical disabilities.
Anne’s interest in this began in 1983. She attended an international conference in Vienna, where she saw firsthand how much a specially trained assistance dog could help someone. It was the amazing bond between them that really struck her. Inspired by the experience, as well as the pioneering work of Bonnie Bergin, who founded the world’s first assistance dog programme in California, Anne knew this could make a huge difference in the UK.
A few years later, in 1986, Anne met Elizabeth at a conference in Boston. Seeing the profound impact of these partnerships, they knew that bringing assistance dogs to the UK had to be done with meticulous planning, ensuring both the wellbeing of the dogs and the highest standards of support for their human partners. Their research led them to The SOHO Foundation in the Netherlands, which helped train Canine Partners’ first trainer, Nina Bondarenko, and laid the foundation for our work.
Establishing the charity was not easy, but Anne had a motto: “Perfect Planning Prevents Problems!” Everything was carefully considered, from setting high welfare standards to assembling a multi-disciplinary board of experts from both human and animal health fields. Their vision and determination saw Canine Partners grow from an idea into a life-changing charity that has now created over 1000 partnerships.
Reflecting on this journey, Elizabeth shares:
When we founded Canine Partners, we believed in the extraordinary potential of the human-animal bond. But even in our wildest dreams, we could not have imagined how many lives would be transformed. Every partnership is unique, yet the impact is always profound – offering independence, confidence, and companionship beyond measure. Seeing the charity flourish over the years has been humbling and I know Anne would be so proud of what we have all achieved. Each time I meet a partnership, I am reminded of the incredible power of these dogs, and I have no doubt Canine Partners will continue changing lives for generations to come.
While much has changed over the past 35 years, one thing remains the same – our commitment to creating life-changing partnerships between disabled people and assistance dogs.