Sheppard & shepherd are fund-raising team for guide dogs charity
GILL Sheppard, from Loughborough, and her German shepherd guide dog, Alba, make a great team.
The pair’s fund-raising stint in their local Tesco store brought in £234 for the Seeing Dogs Alliance, of which Gill is chairwoman of the board of trustees.
The charity has committed to training more dogs to tackle a nationwide shortage of guide dogs.
Bumping into a ladder in a busy London street at the age of 22 was a big moment for Gill, 76, a retired piano teacher. Severely visually impaired since birth – and someone who thought herself pretty proficient using a cane until then – the incident was a sudden wake-up call.
“I realised I might need some assistance,” said Gill. “I’d moved to London to study music and found people in such a rush.
“I could stand by the side of a road like a lemon and no-one would ask if I needed help to cross. Then I had this incident with the ladder. It made me think that if anyone was up there I could have killed them. That’s when I decided to get a dog.”
Her first was a boxer named Honey who hated music (“not a great match,” she admits) and then came a couple more traditional labradors and Retriever crosses before the arrival of Olive, her first of five German shepherds. Alba, has been with her since December 2018
“I was so impressed with them; I never had any problems,” Gill said. “It meant I always insisted on them when it came time to retire my dog.
“I stuck with Guide Dogs for the Blind so I could get a German Shepherd every time, but I think they [the charity] thought I was a bit difficult. The breed is less common in training, so sometimes I had to wait a bit.”
Gill had a successful career teaching piano as a form of rehabilitation for injured servicemen and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. With such as busy life she hadn’t imagined heading up a charity.
“In the late 1990s there was a small group called the Circle of Guide Dog Owners, and I served on the committee,” she said. “We had a sense that blind people could be better served with the provision of dogs.”
“Eventually we took over a dormant charity that had £10,000 in its accounts called Mobility Aid and Guide Dogs Alliance. Some names were thrown about, and the Seeing Dogs Alliance was born, but I didn’t want to be on the committee. Instead I kept an eye on the work and raised funds.”
Gill became a trustee in 2012 and chairwoman in 2016.
“Our one mission is the provision of guide dogs,” she said. “In a perfect world I’d love Seeing Dogs Alliance to have its own residential training school, but we’re very small and that requires huge funds.”