Southampton Guide Dogs Team Visit UBC's Enterprise House

Southampton Guide Dogs Team Visit UBC's Enterprise House

Ever since UBC began supporting Guide Dogs for the Blind earlier this year, we have enjoyed numerous visits from volunteers, puppy trainers and working dogs across each of our 7 business centres.

This is an opportunity for the charity to connect with local people and show how their donations are used, and it's also a fantastic occasion for UBC clients and staff to get together and meet the Guide Dogs team both in person, and in canine!

On Thursday 6th December, UBC's Southampton business centre, Enterprise House, welcomed their local Guide Dogs team for a 'Lunch & Learn' session. Centre manager Sarah Murray walked us through the day's events:

Today (6th December) we welcomed Lee and Victoria from Guide Dogs UK for a 'lunch and learn' session at Enterprise House. They were joined by Lynn and her Guide Dog Yoko and Jon who is a volunteer puppy walker and his pup in training, Paddy, who is 8 months old.

Lynn was able to talk us through first-hand how much difference a guide dog has made to her day-to-day life and how wonderful Yoko and her previous guide dog, Vicky, have been in helping her get out and about. Jon explained his volunteering role and told us all about Paddy and his training (he's currently going through a rebellious phase!)

Lee and Victoria explained how Guide Dogs UK match people to guide dogs and that they look after them throughout their whole journey. It's really quite amazing. To help us understand what life is like for people with limited vision, Lee brought a pair of glasses and encouraged us to try them on. The difference was incredible and it certainly made us appreciate what life could be like with impaired vision.

Naturally everyone was very excited to see the dogs and gave them plenty of attention! We also enjoyed having lunch with the volunteers and the people involved, to hear about how important the guide dogs are in helping people with sight loss enjoy better quality of life. 

It was a fantastic afternoon and we learned a lot about Guide Dogs UK and their amazing work. We hope we can continue to support Guide Dogs into 2019 so we can raise the £5,000 we would need in order to name a Guide Dog!