In 2019 Lily, aged 14, off her own back, wrote to Dogs for Autism (a year after her ASD diagnosis) asking how she could apply for one of their assistance dogs.

Life was so hard for Lily at this point, and she was being home schooled due to so many things, and the thought of having a dog partner to give her confidence to become independent and start to enjoy life again was something we were in full support of.

It’s been a long journey but in 2023 Lily was offered a puppy to help train (a previous partnership with a fully trained dog (Teazel) had failed due to her not getting on with our sausage dog, Otto). Lots of hard work, and 3 years later Orvis and Lily have the most amazing bond. Orvis knows when Lily is struggling and will make sure she is ok. He is Lilys best friend enabling her to have the confidence to be social, but also go to places by herself.

Training an assistance dog is very expensive (£25,000 to train and support a dog throughout its working life) and takes around 2 years to train.

Dogs for Autism are the only charity to provide as assistance dogs to autistic children and adults at no charge to their partners. They are still a young charity and funds are limited so there are not many dogs available for partnership every year. I know how lucky we are to have Orvis in Lily’s life and I am so very grateful to Dogs for Autism. But I would really like other families and autistic individuals to have the same opportunity to become partnered with a dog so they can all realise their individual potential, improve their access to their chosen communities, and to enhance their emotional and physical well-being.

So on Sunday 18th October, John and I are running the Great South Run!

Straight after running the Great south run last year, I signed John up to join me for this years run (He will say he hadn’t agreed but he had!!)!

We haven’t managed to do as much training as we would have liked, but with two weeks to go we have just completed an 8 mile training run and it did feel tough! So the Great south Run is going to be a challenge for us both! But we are determined to complete the 10 miles!!!

We would love to raise some money for DfA and help contribute to training a dog for someone and are so very grateful for any support you can provide xx

Thank you xx