Hounds for heroes!

The purpose of “Hounds for Heroes” is to provide specially trained assistance dogs to injured and disabled men and women of both the UK Armed Forces and the Emergency Services.
Through this provision our aims are to provide help and practical support leading to an enhanced quality of life for our clients.

http://houndsforheroes.com/what-we-do/

Our Founder and Vice Chairman of Hounds for Heroes
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 operational incident , in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, 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 become 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 near by 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

Allen Parton interview on Drive time and Breakfast with Danny Lawrence