Meet "Endal" who was a real Celebrity along with his devoted owner and partner Allen Parton. Sadly he has now passed on and generous as always, in retirement had time to show the new addition to the family his name is EJ (Endal Junior!) the ropes.
What an amazing legecy he has left, a very hard act to follow!
So far EJ is shaping up pretty well. The picture on the right was when he arrived and Endal had no problems with him as he always knew that he was Allen's top boy!
It will take little EJ a long time to catch up, but with Endal's help in the early stages of his training to get him started, he will get there.
Below that picture is one of Endal and EJ in their working jackets but as you can see he did no yet take this too seriously and thought it was a wonderful game.
Here are just some of Endal's achievements. He received a great many awards including the PDSA Gold Medal for Animal Gallantry and Devotion to Duty. This is hailed as "the animals' equivalent of the George Cross". Allen's wheelchair was knocked over by a car and he was thrown to the ground so he went into rescue mode so to speak.
He managed to manoeuvre Allen into the recovery position,cover him with the blanket from his wheelchair and push his mobile phone to his faceand get help.
All in a days work! He was given this wonderful medal and there is a picture of him wearing it on the "Digger and Friends" page.
He was voted the UK's Coolest Canine by readiers of K9 Magizine and K9Online.com. and also received the Blue Peter Gold badge
He went with Allen to all sorts of places, nothing stopped him, above you would see him pressing the button to open the door of a train. They used the a ramp to get on and he really enjoyed the ride. Easy accessability was so very important to them and hopefully this improves all the time.
Allen is now a UK representative of the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners(IAADP).
On the left is the link their website. You can also see Endal
on the right trying out his hand at a bit of resuscitation, a
bit puzzling really she would not wake up!
Endal Junior "collars the lead" in fund raising thanks to the Clanfield Coop store, with a little help from his pals.
For the last twelve years the staff have witnessed first hand how much benefit and enablement a disabled person can gain from a Canine partner by having Endal visit the store nearly every day and helping his human partner Gulf war veteran Allen Parton.
The amazing way in which Endal enabled Allen in his daily life has not been missed by the staff at the Co-op and they unanimously decided to try and support Canine Partners in their efforts to enable more disabled people like Allen.
Mrs. Rene King, who had organised the fund raising, said “ All of us in the store wanted to feel we were doing something that really mattered and would make such a significant difference. We are all too aware that equipment costs can really mount up for any organisation such as Canine Partners".
"This way we can add week by week to the donation and we were so amazed at how quickly our efforts had eventually mounted up. Hopefully one day we’ll see some puppies out and about and have a great feeling of pride knowing that we have all played our part and they are sporting leads and collars given by us”. We now very fortunate to see EJ coming into the store as part of his early socialization and to know that we are contributing to this wonderful cause really matters to us all.
The puppies come into training in teams with names starting with the letter of that particular intake, currently the "L" team are the latest recruits. Puppy parent families take the new puppy at 8 weeks old and socialize the puppy for up to 14 months after which time the puppy enters advanced training to become a fully fledged Canine partners along side their disabled partner.
Part of the socialization requires that the puppy regularly attends puppy class for one hour a week and what the puppy is taught in class is then reinforced by the puppy parent families during the following week
Equipment cost really and do add up said Sandra Parton, puppy operation manager at canine partners "now with nine puppy satellites around the country and up to 65 puppies in training at any one time,the bill is always growing too".
This sort of donation makes such a huge impact and to see the new recruits kitted out in their new leads and collars is wonderful. All our puppy parents love to take home their new fluffy bundles with a puppy pack with new equipment in it. We are truly great full to the staff of the Clanfield Co-op for their generous donation of these essential packs of puppy equipment .
It really does get these raw recruits off to a great start in their new career as Canine Partners. The icing on the cake of today's proceeding has to be the addition of a further donation of £100 made by Southern Cooperative head office, bringing the total equipment fund to £425.
Anyone who is interested in becoming a puppy parent or would like to help Canine Partners can contact the charity either by ringing 01730 716030 or by visiting the website at Canine Partners for further information.
There is also a new book telling Allen's story and of course Endal's too, which you can buy at Amazon, click on this picture of the book cover to go there. It's a great and very moving read! May I remind you to visit Endal's very own Web Site and you will see just what he could do and what the partnership with Allen meant to both of them. The link is on the left, there are also links on the "Digger & Friends" and "Labrador Rescue SE & C Supporter" pages. See you there!
Please go to the next page to see Allen and Endal's visit to the Imperial War Museum
