You may have heard that there is a shortage of guide dogs. Whilst most people wait for a guide dog to be trained by an organisation such as Guide Dogs, it is possible for users to train their own!

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted on the supply of guide dogs in two ways. Firstly, all breeding at Guide Dogs, the world's biggest breeder of assistance dogs, stopped for 5 months. Secondly, up to 1/3 of the charity's puppy handlers stopped working for them. As it takes at least 2 years to train a puppy, it will take a while for the supply of assistance dogs to recover.

Learn more by watching the video below.

But service users can train their own dogs! You can read more about this process on the BBC - Guide dog shortage: The blind people who train their own guide dogs - or listen to the Access All podcast - The people who train their own guide dogs.