Octogenarian's 15-year Guide Dog Puppy-raising Journey

Sunday, 16 June 2024, 5:56 pm
Article: RNZ

Leonard Powell

When Liz Wright retired from nursing 15 years ago, she and her husband Gerry decided to put all their love into puppy-raising guide dogs.

She is now 83, and remarkably, onto her fifteenth puppy, Nellie - a golden labrador.

"I got a dog as an engagement present 55 years ago, so it's all been downhill since then, Liz told RNZ's First Up.

"I always planned to work for guide dogs, because when I was nursing, a woman came in to a medical ward and she was blind and she had a dog and I thought, I want to do that when I'm retired.

"So you apply, they come and look at the house. They look at your fence, how high the fence is, ask you about your life, try to talk you out of it because it's quite arduous."

Wright usually took charge of the puppy at the eight-week mark, and had it for a year to 15 months.

"You have to toilet train it, teach it to defecate and urinate on command, eat to a whistle. You have to teach it recall, so it comes to a whistle or your voice. A whistle's better because you can't get cross with the whistle."

The puppy being trained also needed to be taken "everywhere you think a blind person might go", she said.

"So to the movies, cafes, concerts, church on a bus, on a train, on the ferry ... and you have to think all the time, what would this be like for a blind person?"

Liz said it took no time at all for her to get very close with the dog.

"One of the more irritating things [is] when people say 'Oh, I'd love to do that, but I couldn't ever say good-bye'."

She said she became quite cross when a woman told her years ago that she must be "very hard-hearted" to be able to give the puppies up once they were trained.

"I said 'Goodness me. No, we have to have counselling'. She shut up. People do say that and it's annoying."

It was tough giving up the dog, Liz said, but seeing the difference they made to a blind person made it all worthwhile.

"It's a bit like when your first child leaves home, you know it's horrible, but you will feel better."

The trained dogs can end up anywhere around the country and Liz said she had only seen a handful of those she had puppy-raised again after they left her.

She recently reunited with one of her old puppies, Neka, having made the connection with a friend at Mah-jong who knew a family who had adopted the dog.

"It was 12-and-a-half years since I'd seen the dog, and she remembered me, and she made a fuss of me ... wagged her tail, put her head on my knee and put lots and lots of hair all over me. It was wonderful!"

Liz is rapt with her life raising puppies.

"I love it, and I hope I can do a few more [years] before I'm too old and decrepit," she said.

"I've got a friend who's got a dog, and she said 'I wish I'd retired earlier so I could have started earlier'."

Blind Low Vision NZ said it relied on the generosity of volunteers like Liz, and donations from the community to provide for the blind and vision impaired community in New Zealand.

It is encouraging anyone interested in helping out to head to its website - blindlowvision.org.nz.

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