Puppy Dog Hotel

Welcome to Guide Dogs Reading Mobility Team.

 The ability to get around is vital in order to live a full life yet thousands of blind and partially sighted people never leave home alone. Guide Dogs empowers visually impaired people to get out and about on their own terms and relies on the support of the public to fund its services. We receive no government funding and rely entirely on voluntary and legacy income.

Here at Reading Mobility Team, we are currently supporting 281 working guide dog partnerships in the five counties we cover: Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey and West Sussex. It costs £5 per day to support each working guide dog partnership.  The full lifetime cost of a guide dog from birth to retirement is around £50,000.

Putting a guide dog on the street takes around 10 - 12 months of puppy walking and over eight months of specialised training. Every person and dog is unique, so matching a guide dog to an owner is a complex process and our trainers take into account a person’s needs including their walking speed, height, and lifestyle.

A guide dog is trained to guide its owner in a straight line unless told otherwise, avoiding obstacles. It will stop at kerbs and steps, find doors, crossings and places which are visited regularly; it will guide its owner across the road but cannot decide where and when to cross safely which is the responsibility of the owner.

The average working life of a guide dog is six to seven years and Guide Dogs make a lifetime commitment to provide each owner with a guide dog for as long as it is a suitable and safe means of mobility.  This means a guide dog owner could have 8 or more dogs in a lifetime.

If you would like to find out more information about Guide Dogs, then please contact the Reading Mobility Team on 0845 372 7433, or email us on reading@guidedogs.org.uk

If we can’t help you directly, we’ll do what we can to work with other service providers in the area to meet your needs.

To visit the Guide Dogs website please click here…

Reading Mobility Team

130 Wharfedale Road
Winnersh Triangle
Reading
RG41 5RB