Canine Partners

Hayley is our trainer there, and she was in full flow, leading a class of four puppy parents in an exercise which involved walking their puppies around the village hall on a loose lead, and negotiating their way through a door in a nice, controlled manner. Puppy Beryl loved doing this. So much so, in fact, that when the time came to be released through the door, she knocked it over in her haste to re-join her ‘mum’ Deborah. It is only a small mock-up door, I hasten to add, not a real one. Beryl is 7 months’ old and is a cross between a Labrador and a golden retriever, a daughter of our very own brood bitch Tina. She soon learned to go through the door more calmly, and repeated the exercise beautifully several times, much to Deborah’s delight.

Next to have a go were littermates Tetley and Trinity, whose puppy parents are both called Jane, which causes some confusion in class sometimes, especially when their pups look so similar! These two youngsters have a really strong working mentality, and love being asked to have a go at anything. The main area they are having to focus on at the moment is calming down their enthusiasm, and exercise a bit more patience. People often think that assistance dogs are born calm, but actually we like them to have personality, and bit by bit we teach them to strike a balance between enthusiastic work and calmness in between times.

Octavia is the sensible ‘matron’ of the group. At 18 months’ old, she’s ready to come in to our Southern Centre for her advanced training phase next week, so this was her last puppy class. She’s a black Labrador x golden retriever and really looks so sweet – it just shows how our pups calm down as the months go by, with careful training of course. Her puppy parents, Clinton and Mary, are really going to miss her, but they will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that she will transform somebody’s life, assuming of course that she passes through all the many stages of training that lie ahead of her. Fingers crossed for you Octavia!

Watching on was puppy parent Yvonne, who was getting very excited at the prospect of picking up her new puppy in a few days’ time. It’s an exciting new adventure about to start!

When the class was finished, we congregated for a cup of coffee, with the pups learning to lie quietly under the table, which is good training for them. This was an opportunity for amazing volunteer fundraiser Pat to tell us all about everything she’s been doing to raise funds and awareness in the Surrey area. She has lots of fun and is always looking for more volunteers to join in her many and varied fundraising efforts, so why don’t you contact us if you’d like to join her group? Pat’s latest excitement included a feature on local telly about Canine Partners, plus some brilliant donations from recent talks she has given to various clubs. To cap it all, the other day she drove past the National Express coach that is covered in Canine Partners stickers, nearly causing her to drive into a hedge.

I don’t know where we’d be without puppy parents. And we need more of you! So if you think you might have what it takes to do this incredibly important volunteer job, and play a vital part in transforming people’s lives, please do get in touch. We have puppy satellite groups in various regions of the UK, just like Hayley’s Surrey group, and we’d love to hear from you.

Andy