Celebrating 90 years of training pups

Guide Dogs is celebrating 90 years of helping people with sight loss live the life they choose.

The UK’S first guide dog partnerships qualified exactly 90 years ago.

Since then, Guide Dogs has helped transform the lives of thousands of people, through a range of different services.

As well as the worldrenowned guide dog service, the charity also provides buddy dogs, companion dogs, sighted guides and has become the largest employer of specialists dedicated to helping children and young people with sight loss.

It was 1931 when Muriel Crooke and Rosamund Bond started training dogs to support servicemen who had lost their sight in the Firstworldwar.

Inspired by projects in

America, Germany and Switzerland, these remarkable women organised the training from a lock-up garage in Merseyside.

Back then, the idea was radical, but the impact was immediate.

Within six months of meeting German Shepherds Flash, Folly, Meta and Judy, their owners reported finding a freedom and independence they had not known since before the war.

Three years later, the Guide Dogs for the Blind

Association was formed.

Since then, 36,000 lives have been transformed through a guide dog partnership and many thousands more as the charity has developed and expanded its services over the decades.

Having started with just four dogs, Guide Dogs is now responsible for 8400 puppies and dogs at any one time.

The charity is one of the only organisations globally that breeds and nurtures dogs throughout their lifetime – with 306 trainers, and 4600 dog partnerships supported.

Guide Dogs are experts in creating and nurturing strong relationships between people and dogs.

Every partnership is built on trust, after carefully considering the needs and

characteristics of each person and dog to find the perfect match.

Guide Dogs have over 16,000 volunteers who give around 18.5 million hours of support each year.

Ninety years on, Guide Dogs faces a similar problem to that of Muriel Crooke – training enough specialist guide dog trainers to meet the demand for dogs.

In the next 10 years, Guide Dogs will need to recruit a further 60 trainees to support those people who will need a guide dog.

Sight loss isn’t going away. Every six minutes in the UK, one more person loses their sight.

Every day, 250 more people join the two million already living with sight loss and this number is set to double by 2050.

But Guide Dogs isn’t going away either.

With new services, new technologies and amazing staff, dogs, and supporters, they plan to double the amount of people they help by 2023. But they need your support.

To find out how to support the recentlylaunched Guide Dogs 90 Appeal, visit: www. guidedogs.org.uk/ guide-dogs-appeal/

Or to volunteer go to www.guidedogs.org.uk/ how-you-can-help/ volunteering-for-guidedogs/