Our amazing journey
We’ve come a long way in our 30 year history.
Inspired by the way her own dogs instinctively wanted to help, our founder, Frances Hay (pictured) set up a charity in 1986. Fran’s vision was to help disabled people by training assistance dogs to make daily life easier. Dogs for the Disabled was registered as a charity in 1988.
Over the years, we’ve used our insight into the benefits of working with highly trained assistance dogs to bring many people independence and companionship. These dogs support physically disabled children and adults, as well as families with a child with autism. Our experience of training and working with assistance dogs over the years inspired us to explore other ways dogs can help individuals, families and communities.
Through our Family Dog service we’ve helped hundreds of families explore the helping potential of a pet dog. For some people, having their own dog may not be possible. We looked and their situations and it prompted us to explore other ways to bring people and dogs together. Time after time, we prove just how effective a dog can be.
Recently, we’ve started to train activity and therapy dogs to work with specialist handlers in communities and schools, something that we feel can have a very positive benefit.
We’re learning all the time and the more we learn, the more people we can help. We are constantly looking for new ways to change lives through our highly skilled assistance dogs and much more.