Preparations for our Guide Dog Puppy!

Our Puppy Raiser journey will be starting very soon! Our Puppy Development Adviser called this week to let us know that our Guide Dogs puppy will be a female, black Labrador Cross. She was born in the first week of August and will be arriving at the beginning of October. We can't wait!

My husband and I have had a wonderful experience with Guide Dogs since first registering our interest to become Puppy Raisers. After some initial paperwork, we had a virtual interview with a member of the Guide Dogs team, followed by an in-person training session at the Leamington Training Centre and a Zoom live training event. We have been given excellent support including access to an online learning resource which provides advice on everything you could possibly need to know about raising a puppy. I'm currently working my way through the learning modules and the quality of guidance and teaching is fantastic. The teaching methods are based around four principles; knowing your puppy, teaching foundations, managing for success and being in partnership and they provide a wonderful structure to learn how to train a dog.

Of course, we have also had a lot of fun choosing some puppy necessities to ensure our pup has a warm welcome! We have tried not to go mad with our toy, bed and blanket purchases but we have enjoyed numerous trips to pet stores and garden centres with the odd pot of tea and slice of cake thrown in! We are counting down the days until the puppy arrives but in the meantime I have a lot of reading to do. Wish me luck!

Click here if you'd like to find out more about Puppy Raising with Guide Dogs.