Autumn put her head on my knee and I burst into tears. It was the happiest day of my life ... Guide dogs change lives, I’m proof of that
Lanarkshire landmarks, including Hamilton Town House, were bathed in blue light recently to mark the 90th anniversary of the Laura was depressed and ashamed of losing her sight , but her four-legged friend gave her a new lease of life
Labrador, Autumn, who gave her a reason to live again after she lost her sight and sank into a depression.
Laura Bradley was a young woman who was deeply ashamed of her sight loss.
When friends and acquaintances stopped her in the street to say a casual hello, she was too proud to explain to them that she didn’t know who they were – because she couldn’t see.
Rather than tell them she’d been registered blind, she’d listen intently to what they had to say in the hope of picking up a clue that would reveal their identity.
As her vision diminished, so too did her confidence and her love for living.
She feared going out and crashing into any newly installed sign posts or street furniture.
On one occasion, she walked straight into a glass door and heard someone laughing.
When friends phoned to make arrangements, she’d find an excuse not to leave the haven of home, where she felt safe.
The anxiety began to eat away at the once gregarious woman, who sank into depression.
Laura was only six weeks old when her mum, Margaret, began to suspect that she had a sight defect. And, by the time she was a toddler, her left eye had developed a turn.
“I still managed to lead a relatively normal life. I learned to ride a bike and I played hide and seek with my friends,” said Laura, whose parents were told by specialists at Glasgow’s eye infirmary that she had the relatively rare eye condition, macular dystrophy.
“At school, I would need to sit nearer the front so I could see the board. I’d depend on my friends by copying their notes.
“I went to the low vision clinic and they gave me magnifiers and glasses to help me see the board.
“But they were like binoculars, and I’d only ever wear them in the house.”
At the age of 15, surgery to correct her squint left Laura with double vision, and sight in her left eye became blurry.
Having attended an appointment at the eye clinic at Hairmyres Hospital in 2006, Laura was, at the age of 25, registered blind.
“I was not that concerned,” she said. “I didn’t experience that much of a deterioration. I could still read and see colours, and could bring up the menu on the TV and choose channels.”
Laura had worked in a factory for seven years. Now registered blind, the production line was no longer a safe working environment.
Having never before been on benefits, she negotiated the minefield of the social security system in a bid to determine what she was entitled to claim.
Her mum accompanied her to a Job Centre appointment, at which Laura explained that she’d had to resign from her employment due to her failing sight.
The dismissive adviser rolled her eyes, telling Laura’s mum: “Well, she could see well enough yesterday.”
“I was in absolute bits,” remembers Laura. “My mum said if I hadn’t been so upset, she’d have made a fuss and complained.”
Social Work signposted her to Motherwell College where she enrolled for a course designed to equip blind and visually impaired people with keyboard skills. There, she gained an English Higher and a HND. Displaying a flair for technology, Laura went on to graduate from the University of the West of Scotland in 2014 with a BSc in IT.
But she knew she was beginning to struggle with her failing sight.
The fog and distortion meant bookworm Laura could no longer read.
On holiday with friends in Gran Canaria, she’d try to sit near the charity, Guide Dogs. Here, we speak to Laura Bradley – a Guide Dogs employee, volunteer and proud owner of adorable golden toilets on nights out, anxious she’d walk into doors, pillars or people.
“It was quite a dark time in 2013/14. You have got to go through the grieving process of losing your sight,” she recalls.
“In early December 2014, my mum said: ‘You are not living any more. You’re just existing. You have gone to uni, you are still young, and here you are, just existing in your house.’
“She told me we were going to put up my Christmas tree and have a glass of wine to cheer me up.”
While mum and daughter were doing just that, charity appeal Text Santa was on TV – and one of the show’s four featured charities was Guide Dogs.
It told the inspirational stories of people whose guide dogs had transformed their lives.
“I never thought I’d need a mobility aid and the thought of it horrified me,” said Laura, of Blantyre. “I was ashamed I was not the same as everybody else.
“I was too proud to let anybody know I had eye problems. When I look back now, I realise that the only person it bothered was me.”
Three days before Christmas 2014, she made the call to Guide Dogs, whose base turned out to be a stone’s throw away in
Hamilton. As promised, the charity’s Emma Brown, shadowed by Gillian Taylor, paid Laura a visit, followed by a mobility assessment orientation, during which she walked a route, followed closely by Guide Dogs staff, who assessed her mobility.
“It was blue bins day,” remembers Laura. “On the route from my house to the shop, I must have bounced into every bin along the street and back.”
A Guide Dogs mobility instructor then conducted a lifestyle assessment to establish whether she would need a dog that would be capable of accompanying her on public transport and to busy places.
In a bid to determine whether she would benefit from gene therapy, Laura and her mum travelled to University Hospital Oxford, where consultants diagnosed Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis – a rare retinal disorder caused by a faulty gene carried by both parents.
It was there she received the call she was longing for: she was now on the waiting list for a guide dog.
“I then learned how to use a long cane on a 10-week course,” explained Laura. “My confidence as a visually impaired person started to build and I became no longer ashamed of being blind.
“With the safety of the cane, I began walking again, knowing that it would pick up dips in the road or obstacles in front of me – and
people would know that this was a person who cannot see very well.”
Having started to volunteer at Guide Dogs twice a week, Laura was contacted in February by instructor Simmy, who said he’d be paying her a visit with a dog named Autumn.
She and fully trained, 18-monthold Autumn did their first walk together, with Simmy and a trainee following.
The following day, the sound and size of large buses travelling down Union Street scared the young golden Labrador, who overcame her fear and carried on with encouragement from Laura.
Within a week, Simmy told Laura that he believed she and Autumn to be the perfect match.
“I hadn’t even known she could potentially have been for me,” explained Laura. “She came over and put her wee head on my knee, and I burst into tears. It was the happiest day of my life.”
During two and a half weeks’ training along different routes, on trains and buses and even at gym spin classes, Autumn took everything in her stride.
In March 2016, Laura was handed the harness that confirmed she had qualified as a guide dog owner.
“We have been together six years and I know the meaning of every single move she makes,” continued Laura, 40, who became a full-time operations support coordinator with Guide Dogs in September 2017, and works alongside colleagues and friends who have accompanied her on her guide dog journey.
When asked to describe her limited vision, she compares it to what a sighted person experiences when they stare at a bright light, then look away. That’s what Laura sees all
the time. “Now, Autumn is scared of nothing,” she continued. “She goes on the London Underground and the busier it is, the more she loves it.
“She’s seven, going on two. She has a princess toy box and always wants to play. In the morning while I shower, she stays in bed until I wake her up. She has a spending pen [for toileting] in my garden.
“She’s beautiful – cute as a button, and she knows it. She looks like a dainty wee princess, but snores like an old man, breaks wind on the way upstairs and burps after dinner!”
Laura’s mum, Margaret, and the rest of the family were heartbroken when their bull mastiff dog, Dora – Autumn’s playmate – passed away at the age of 11 three years ago.
Having registered as Guide Dog re-homers, they travelled to the Guide Dog training school in Forfar three years ago and brought
black Lab Clover home to Blantyre. Laura says the two dogs have been great friends since the day they met, and an off-duty Autumn loves nothing more than free-running, off-harness, with playful Clover.
“Working for this charity, I know I can help other people who went through the same things as I did,” said Laura, who packs Autumn’s case with her blanket and ‘Bed Ted,’ and the pair travel together on land and by air to breeding and training centres across the country.
“Although I’ve lost my sight, I’m probably happier and more settled because I’ve met such a great bunch of friends from being more independent – and I have responsibility for Autumn, who is absolutely perfect.
“Guide Dogs is such an amazing charity that really changes people’s lives. I’m proof of that.”