Cara says guide dog changed her life

AN Ennis woman who lost her sight at the age of 20 has described getting a guide dog as “life changing” as she urged people to support this Friday’s national Guide Dog Day.
39-year-old Cara Gibbons got her first guide dog, Uri, in 2013 describing him as “my rock”. Uri has since retired as a guide dog, though he is still with Cara, and she is now training with two-year-old Sadie.
The Master’s student told The Clare Champion that having a guide dog has given her a freedom she never experienced while using a cane.
“What I’ve found since having a guide dog, now I go for a walk just to go for a walk. I would never have done that with a cane, it was purely getting from A to B. Now I have that freedom of being able to leave the house and say I’m just going for a walk. It’s such a simple thing for so many people but it means the world when it is something that has been taken away from you. Being able to walk into town or home, things like that are just life changing.”
Speaking about how much having a guide dog means to her she said, “How I describe it to people is, when you have a disability like blindness, I can go on a plane to America on my own because there is assistance the whole way. You get to the airport and you get assistance on the plane, you know they are there and they look after you. But I can’t get from my house to the shop easily.
“Having a cane, yes you can do that, but it wasn’t an enjoyable experience concentrating on every step you take. With the dog there’s a lot more freedom and flow to getting from one place to another. Yes, the two of you are concentrating really hard, but the dog is taking a lot of it.
“If I go onto a long stretch of the footpath, I don’t have to worry about that because the guide dog will be trained to walk along a straight footpath. If there is a bin on the path, they are trained to walk around it. It just makes getting around so much more enjoyable.”

She recently held a birthday fundraiser for Irish Guide Dogs for the blind and is urging people to support Guide Dog Day so others can experience the benefit of having a guide dog.
There are a number of ways to support Guide Dog Day, including taking on the #100K4GDD Challenge by walking, running or cycling 100k in May or texting WOOF to 50300 to donate €4.
For more check https://guidedogs.ie/.