Activities of Organisation: The ability to get around is vital in order to live a full life yet thousands of blind and partially sighted people never leave home alone. Guide Dogs empowers visually-impaired people to do that and relies on the support of public to fund its services. We breed and train guide dogs which provide life changing mobility and there are currently 4500 working guide dog partnerships in the UK. Guide dog owners only have to pay a nominal 50p for their dog to ensure no one is prevented from having one due to lack of funds. The full lifetime cost of a guide dog from birth to retirement is £49,800. We also provide a range of mobility and other rehabilitation servuices such as white cane training as well as campaigning passionately to break down barriers- both physical and legal- to enable blind and partially sighted poeple to get around on their own.

Description of volunteering duties:

• Volunteer puppy walkers take a puppy into their homes for just over a year, getting it used to the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Guide Dogs provide food and meet vets' bills. Puppy walkers give their pups a firm foundation for their latest training and life with a blind or partially sighted person.
• A puppy walker takes on a puppy at around 7 weeks, and nurtures it for the first year of it's life. Teaching it basic commands and socialising it in as many different environments as possible, under the guidance of the Puppy Walker Supervisor.
• Puppy Walkers have to meet certain criteria before they are able to be considered for this volunteering role. The main part of this criteria is that the puppy cannot be left alone longer than 3 hours in any 24 hour period, and any potential volunteers must fulfil this.