This year the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association is celebrating its 75th anniversary and the CSV Action Desk and Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio Cambridgeshire would like to sponsor a puppy through its guide dog training. In order to do so we need your old mobile phones, 1429 to be precise! It costs around Β£5,000 to train a puppy for 18 months and each phone that is sent in raises Β£3.50 for the cause.
 | | Volunteer Puppy Walker - Paul Philips |
Guide dogs as we know them were first trained during the First World War, Dr Gerhard Stalling, German doctor, had the idea of training dogs as guides for soldiers who had been blinded at the Front. Dr Stalling opened the world's first guide dog school for the blind at Oldenburg in August 1916 and the school grew and new branches opened all over Germany, turning out up to 600 dogs a year. In 1930, two British women, Muriel Crooke and Rosamund Bond, heard about The Seeing Eye, training schools that had been set up in Switzerland by an American, Dorothy Eustis, who sent over one of her trainers to help them. By 1931, the first four British guide dogs completed their training and three years later The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association was founded.
 | | Sue Doogan does puppy walking |
From 1956 Guide Dogs began to recruit volunteers as puppy walkers and a few years and later a breeding programme was introduced. Tollgate House, near Leamington Spa, opened in 1970 as the charity's breeding centre. If you would like to help raise money to fund a guide dog puppy through its training, all you need to do take part is call the Action Desk, in partnership with CSV Media, on 0845 300 10 90 They will arrange for you to get a FREEPOST envelope to send your old mobile phone to the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association. The phones are recycled either by taking out the components so they can be melted down and reused, or they are sent to Developing Countries. | 
