Canine Partners

What would you do if you were given 25 small pieces of fabric?

Would you use them to make a sky full of butterflies? Or a portrait of the Queen? Or perhaps a stunning close-up of a black Labrador’s face? Maybe a quintessential English country garden or a bee-keeping scene, if you were that way inclined? Or possibly even find some driftwood and make some patchwork birds to sit on the various branches, with sweet little wire legs?

These were just some of the stunning creative inventions that were put together last week by members of the Canine Partners family for our Textile Art Challenge Exhibition at the Oxmarket Centre of Arts, Chichester, the brainchild of Dr Sharon-Michi Kusunoki, renowned Curator and Executive Director of Surrealism and the Arts. Dr Sharon helped us to create a stunning exhibition, and even recruited professional guest artists to supplement the exhibition with their own work, all inspired by our ‘25 fabric squares’ idea.

As chief executive of a charity with innovation and creativity at its heart, where people spend their day jobs thinking up better and better ways of matching assistance dogs to the specific needs of disabled people, it felt amazing to see how our Canine Partners family can divert this creative energy into another direction. It was particularly inspiring to see how utterly brilliant these creations are, coming from members of staff, a whole host of volunteers and our partners and supporters too.

These exhibits came from all over the country, and many of them have been transported back to base in the boot of my car, following a visit to one or other of our satellite groups around the country. If I’d known how special the works of art were, I’d have handled them a bit more carefully when putting them in the boot with the bags of dog food!

The exhibition proved a great success, and now the idea has moved up to the Midlands, where we have a whole host of other exhibits, for our Midlands Textile Art Challenge Exhibition which is now open.

We also had another recent excitement as we were joined by our friends from Help for Heroes, who held a conference for their supporters at our Southern Centre, because they are keen to showcase the work of Canine Partners. Many injured servicemen have been provided with canine partners thanks to the sponsorship of H4H.

Now the bank holiday is out of the way, our attention moves to Staffordshire where we are holding another of our puppy parties, an opportunity for people in the Stafford area to find out how they can help us to train our puppies in their formative months. From there, I will be heading to our Midlands Centre, to see how our Midlands exhibition is shaping up, and you never know, I might have dreamed up some creative way of using 25 fabric squares by then. But no, you’re right; that’s probably a long shot.

Meanwhile our Scottish team are gearing up for a very busy couple of weeks – our annual golf event at Prestwick, our West Coast support group’s Bluebell Walk on Sunday (why not join us there, from 12 – 4pm at Pollokshaws Burgh Hall? See https://caninepartners.org.uk/event/big-glasgow-bluebell-walk-fun-day/) and our sell-out Fingask Follies evening at Dundas Castle on the following Wednesday.

So everything is hotting up in the world of Canine Partners right across the UK!! And most importantly of all, it is enabling us to change more people’s lives, like the people who have just been partnered with dogs at each of our Training Centres this week. This is what it’s all about, and why we all do what we do!

Onwards & upwards!

Andy