Thursday 6 January 2011

Hounds For Heroes

Hounds for Heroes



PetCompare  |  2010/12/22 09:39:22
Hounds for Heroes
A charity that looks to provide trained assistance dogs to injured and disabled men and women of both the UK armed forces and civilian emergency services
Petcompare offers support to Hounds for Heroes a charity that looks to provide specially trained assistance dogs to injured and disabled men and women of both the UK armed forces and civilian emergency services. Initially "Hounds for Heroes" intends to raise £100,000 to buy 5 Labradors, the Puppies on Parade Appeal, these dogs will be carefully selected for all the qualities needed to produce excellent assistance dogs. The Charity will carefully select puppy parents to start with this very essential part of their training. After around 15 months the specialist training will start, with a combination of puppy parents and the new owner. All the time the puppies will be meeting on a weekly basis to carry out socialisation and specialist training. When the dogs are fully trained the ownership will be fully transferred to the new owner.

Hounds for Heroes Founder:
In 1991, Allen Parton was a Chief Petty Officer serving in the Royal Navy during the Gulf War. He had a very promising military career ahead of him and a wife and two children at home in Portsmouth. Then a tragic war time incident changed his life completely. Allen suffered a severe head injury which left him with considerable physical and emotional trauma. It wiped out his memories and left him unable to walk, speak or write. He couldn't even remember getting married or the birth of his children. He spent the next five years in hospital, struggling to come to terms with his disabilities.

Then Allen was partnered with Endal, a yellow Labrador assistance dog. Since then, Allen's confidence has returned to such an extent that he cannot stop talking about how much Endal transformed his life. Endal helped to save Allen's marriage and helped to rebuild a relationship with his children. He became independent and Sandra no longer has to be on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, allowing her the freedom and peace of mind to live her own life again.

Endal could respond to over one hundred commands and could also problem solve. One day when Allen was struggling to reach up to withdraw money from a cashpoint machine, Endal instinctively jumped up, took the money and card in his mouth and passed it to Allen. On another occasion, Endal demonstrated his ability to react in an emergency. When visiting Crufts in 2001, Allen was knocked out of his wheelchair by a speeding car and left unconscious in a car park. The driver was in a deep state of shock, so Endal took charge and pulled Allen into the recovery position, covered him with a blanket and fetched his mobile phone. Getting no response Endal then left Allen's side and went to a nearby hotel and raised the alarm.

This amazing partnership starting Allen thinking about setting up a new charity to help the disabled of the Armed Forces and Emergency Service. Allen says "it has been a dream of mine to have a charity that works specifically for these people who routinely put their lives in danger. "Hounds for Heroes" is our chance of giving people the same chances that I have had. We owe them a great debt and this is our way of saying thank you"

Sadly Endal died in Spring 2009 but the partnership keeps going and Allen is pictured above with EJ (Endal Junior) who is the first dogs to be trained under the auspices of Hounds for Heroes.

To Find out how you can get involved in supporting "Hounds for Heroes" visit www.houndsforheroes.com.

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