Firstly thank you for taking the time to read this.

My Dad was recently diagnosed with a less common form of Dementia called Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) sometimes called Picks disease. It is a form of Dementia that occurs when the frontal lobes of the brain start to shrink. It has it own set of symptoms and is separate form Alzheimer's disease. It causes a range symptoms including personality changes such as socially inappropriate behaviour and impulsiveness, cognitive problems such as difficulty with speech and language, using the wrong object for the wrong task, movement and balance difficulties.

Unfortunately there is no known cure or medication that can help this form of Dementia or delay its progression, but today's approaches are palliative care so focusing on easing symptoms.

Whilst this has been truly heartbreaking for us as a family and very upsetting for my Mum I want to put my energy into positive things and will be reducing my hours at work to support them and doing all I can to make his and Mums life a bit easier.

Upon searching for positive things to do I found a wonderful page on Facebook called Dementia Dogs, based in Barnsley that offer a wonderful service. Dementia Dogs are a family of specially trained woolly huskies called Thunder, Thor, Binny Boo, and Mum Stormy. They show empathy and bring a huge smile to the faces of all those they meet. They visit care homes, memory cafes, schools, nursing homes and anywhere that love the affection of beautiful, intelligent, well trained huskies. We are hoping to take Dad for a one to one visit in November.

Anyway, I haven't ran a half marathon for about a year so I entered the Milton Keynes Winter Half planned for 10th December and hope to smash it and as a result raise money for Dementia Dogs to enable them to support more people and to raise awareness of Picks disease and make my Dad proud.

Update: the MK winter half was cancelled due to snow ❄️ so has been rescheduled for February. Whilst I was very dishearted about it being cancelled the positive is I have longer to train and hopefully increase my sponsorship target thanks to you guys!

Thank you for your time and I would massively appreciate any donation as would the doggies and their Daddy that trained them so well.

Claire xxx