Arya and friends

Arya has made a new friend!

It was quite a surprise when she looked in her bed and found... Daisy!

Daisy is another sponsor puppy, and quite by chance, Arya's Volunteer Puppy Trainers, Barry and Liz, looked after her for a night. 

Liz explains: "Daisy stayed for a 'sleepover' and completely took over! Arya kept finding her 'pretending' not to have taken her bed. Very cheeky - but very cute."

She continues: "No matter where Arya settled, Daisy was always close by. They became great friends very quickly - they are stepsisters after all."

That's right - they're stepsisters because they have the same dad, called Milton. Incidentally, Daisy is actually named after her mum. Daisy, Daisy indeed.

Normally, what happens in these situations, is that the younger dog learns from the older one. However, we're not sure it happened the right way around this time. What do you think?

Arya has also continued her training during social distancing, with the help of Barry and Liz.

Here she is walking very nicely indeed on her lead.

Continuing the training theme, Arya is as brilliant at recall as she is at heelwork. 'Recall' is name we give to a dog's ability to come back when called, either by name or using a whistle. It's really important: a deaf person in a park or field will absolutely need to know that their hearing dog will always come back. They don't want to be stranded on their own if their dog disappears. So, it's wonderful that Arya is so responsive here.

While we're at it, why don't we see a couple more videos? Here's one of Arya getting another clip. Another? Yes! Don't you remember, she had one last time and underneath all that fluff emerged a brand new pup, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis! Well, as you can see below, she was so well handled that time, that it's just not a problem for her. In fact she seems to enjoy it.

Third 'clip' (pun intended) coming up - and this is, quite simply, Arya having some fun out and about. During lockdown, Barry and Liz have done a fantastic job of keeping her physically and mentally stimulated, and you can see she really loves her ball-in-a-sock toy.

Wait - there's more! We said 'friends' in the title, so here's another friend, called Bolt.

This time Barry explains: "Arya went to see Bolt just prior to him leaving to take up 'work'. Bolt was with a mutual friend during Bed and Breakfast, and we often saw him."

'Bed and Breakfast' is what we call it when our volunteers look after our dogs during evening and weekends, while they're in their advanced training. This usually takes place at one of our training centres, so the volunteers need to live close by. They drop off their puppies in the morning and pick them up in the afternoons, like kids at school! We haven't been able to do this nearly as much during lockdown, so often our volunteers have taken on responsibility for training, and they've done an incredible job, guided by our staff through video calls.

As you can see Arya and Bolt just loved 'hanging out' together!

And that's all for now. We hope you enjoyed seeing more of Arya's life and times. She's so loved by Barry and Liz, and we all adore her. She's doing really well, thanks to your kindness. So, from all of us, thank you once again for sponsoring Arya!