About Canine Partners for Independence

Canine Partners trains its dogs to respond to some 90 different commands and to perform a wide variety of household tasks that would normally be beyond the capability of their disabled partners.

These tasks include fetching and carrying, helping with the shopping, helping to pay at the checkout, drawing the curtains, placing their partners in the rescue position if they fall out of their wheel chair, loading and unloading the washing machine and helping to cross the road.

The dogs, mainly Labradors and Retrievers but not exclusively so, are brought into the programme as puppies at the age of six to eight weeks.They spend the first year of their lives with "Puppy Parents", volunteers who receive weekly training with their dogs. The dogs are then brought into full-time, advanced training, for four to six months at the end of which time they are partnered with disabled people.

After this, Canine Partners remains in touch with each partnership, providing follow up training and monitoring progress.

Equal care is taken in the selection and training of disabled people for partnerships. Each prospective partner is carefully assessed and, if considered suitable for a dog, is then trained to work with a dog. The final stage in the process is an intensive residential training course, lasting 12 days, at the end of which time successful applicants are graduated with dogs.