AT a recent meeting of Ross Rotary Club, Nova, a golden retriever from Dogs for Good, brought along Peter and Karen Cornwall to talk about the work of the charity.

Peter said that the charity trains and provides three categories of dog to meet specific needs. An assistant dog supports adults and children with physical disabilities to help them lead more independent lives at home and in the community. A family dog helps families who want a pet to help them overcome specific challenges within their family for example a family with an autistic child. A community dog is trained with a specialist handler to support activities and provide therapy in communities and schools by helping people develop life skills.

Inspired by the way her own dogs instinctively wanted to help, founder, Frances Hay set up a charity in 1986 with the vision of helping disabled people by training assistance dogs and this was registered as a charity, Dogs for the Disabled, in 1988. In 2015 the charity changed its name to Dogs for Good and over the years has established over 800 dog partnerships, 350 of which are current, but the demand is much higher with over 2,000 enquiries a year for assistant dogs.

Peter explained that he and Karen are puppy socialisers. Their role being to provide a home and basic training for the puppy until it's 16 months old at which time it goes onto a 20 week training and assessment course before field training and subsequent placement with a client.

Ross Rotary currently sponsors two puppies and after the excellent talk and heart warming videos of some of the dogs fulfilling their role, president Richard Williams presented the charity with a club donation of £500.

Ross Rotary Club meets every Monday evening 6.30pm for 7pm at the Chase Hotel. Guests and potential members are very welcome. Please visit our website at rossrotary.com