Blessing of the Animals - Sunday 10 October

St Matthew’s and Mobility Dogs would love to welcome you to St Matthew-in-the-City on Sunday 10 October at 1pm to celebrate the annual ‘Blessing of the Animals’.

We relish the chance to be involved in this special event with you all. Mobility Dogs have been raising, training and placing assistance dogs for more than 10 years. Our primary goal is to assist people living with a disability by partnering them with a mobility dog to help in everyday tasks and to give them constant companionship, loyalty and provide a sense of security. We recognise that no disability or dog is the same, therefore each mobility dog partnership is unique.

Over the years we have partnered our dogs with people living with conditions like cerebral palsy, spinal injury and Parkinson’s, to name a few disabilities. Our dogs have full access rights under the Dog Control Act which means they can go into most public places, on public transport, educational institutions, employment environments, restaurants and cinemas.

We are totally reliant on community funders and on our wonderful community volunteers who help us raise and train our dogs for people who need them. Our wider social initiative is the Puppies in Prison programme where we teach prisoners how to train our dogs.

We see very positive outcomes from this programme as the prisoners learn pro-social skills of working in a team as well as getting the reward from the absolute love and care of a dog. (Jody Wilson, General Manager))

www.stmatthews.nz

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Published 3 September 2021