Canine Partners

This is the occasion when our latest group of fully fledged partnerships return for their graduation day, and it is a brilliant opportunity to celebrate the whole team effort that has contributed to putting these dogs and people together. Guests joined us from all over the UK, and it was a landmark moment as we celebrated our first canine partnership on the Isle of Man.

On Tuesday there was yet more excitement as we opened up our Midlands Centre to a big group of invited guests, many of whom have contributed in some way, shape or form, to enable us to build our brand spanking new Residential Accommodation which is fully accessible for disabled people to stay on site with us when learning how to work with their dogs. This was our way of showing people how their donations have been used, and to say Thank You for helping to make such great progress over the last year or so (this time last year we hadn’t even started demolishing the old barn that used to be there, let alone building the new one in its place). The contractors are applying the finishing touches, and we will be moving in and making use of the facilities from the beginning of next month, when our first partnership course will take place – how exciting is that!

Then it was back down South to join our Fareham puppy satellite group, which is equally exciting! Our Fareham folk were celebrating their first anniversary, having set up in the area just a year ago. And blimey they are making progress!!! Hayley is our trainer there, and led the puppy class with seven pups present. Forester and Lottie are the babies of the group at just 12 weeks’ old, and are being puppy-trained by Hazel and Glenis respectively. We have a close interest in these two as they are the children of Pebbles, one of our ‘breeding bitches’, for whom we have high hopes. Their dad is a guide dog, but to be honest Forester and Lottie don’t care – they just want to run around being puppy dogs! It’s all about socialisation at this age, and getting to know about life. Interestingly, young Forester is being sponsored by the brilliant people at the Foresters Friendly Society, who have taken us on as their charity of the year. To say we are excited about that is an understatement, but that’s another story!

Ingle and Jonty are the next oldest, at the grand old age of 5 months. Malcolm is puppy training Ingle, who is another of our ‘home grown’ pups, with canine partner Ivy as his proud mum, while Jonty came to us from Guide Dogs. Puppy parents Malcolm and Lyn guided Ingle and Jonty through the obstacle course that Hayley had set up, showing how their socialisation is starting to be mixed in with some basic obedience – at this age they are teething and are all legs like pipe-cleaners, so nothing is too serious for them. They both did really well, much to Lyn and Malcolm’s delight! Then it was Fern’s turn. Fern is ten months’ old and also came to us from Guide Dogs. Her puppy parent Helena was telling me how enthusiastic Fern is about her work, and that in her ideal world she would do everything at 100 miles an hour. Her tail never stops wagging, from start to finish.

Last but not least it was the turn of older hands Willa and Waveney (still only 15 months, mind you). Handled respectively by Lorraine, and Tim & Chris, these are getting close to the time when they will move onto the next phase of advanced training. Indeed Tim was telling me how Waveney is starting this next chapter on Monday, which will be exciting for Waveney, while distressing for Tim & Chris. Waveney and Willa are both very confident, and have been socialised in so many situations that their attitude is ‘been there, done it, bought the T shirt’. But of course it has been quite a journey to get them to this stage, and has involved a lot of hard work along the way. We are so lucky to have such dedicated volunteers who are willing to socialise and train our dogs in the early months.

And of course the reason our puppy parents do this work is in order to make a difference in the world. And it was therefore brilliant that three of our fully fledged partnerships attended our Fareham anniversary celebration, so that everyone can see ‘the finished product”. We all enjoyed meeting up with Geoff & cp Delilah, Martin & cp Keith, and David & cp Zack. We celebrated with tea and cake, acknowledging the brilliant progress that our team have achieved in Fareham in just one year, and we also met various guests who had joined us on the day, to learn more. Brilliant thanks to Hayley for overseeing the class, and to Chris & Tim for organising lots of awareness-raising events in the area, and to all the team of volunteers and supporters. It’s a big team effort and everyone joins together in keeping their fingers crossed for young Waveney as he heads into advanced training on Monday!

Andy

Postscript: it’s now Monday morning, and Waveney has arrived safely, and is already working with advanced trainer Stephen, who will be looking after him during his assessment period, and if all goes well (fingers crossed) for the remainder of his advanced training. Meanwhile our Fareham satellite have been busy again, and have attended the Big Bark on the Beach where they raised over £700, which will help another pup to enter the training programme. Absolutely brilliant stuff!!