Key messages

The ability to get around is vital in order to live a full life yet thousands of blind and partially sighted people never leave home alone. Guide Dogs empowers visually impaired people to do that and relies on the support of the public to fund its services.

We breed and train guide dogs which provide life changing mobility and there are currently 4,500 working guide dog partnerships in the UK. Guide dog owners only have to pay a nominal 50p for their dog to ensure no-one is prevented from having one due to a lack of funds. The full lifetime cost of a guide dog from birth to retirement is £48,500.

We also provide a range of mobility and other rehabilitation services such as white cane training as well as campaigning passionately to break down barriers – both physical and legal – to enable blind and partially sighted people to get around on their own.

Below are PDF's of our key messages and related documents:                

key messages booklet PDF (732kb)
breakdown of a pound PDF (261kb)
cost of a guide dog PDF (278kb)
Guide Dogs shopping list PDF (92kb)
our dogs PDF (385kb)
guide dog breeds PDF (220kb)
our money PDF (56kb)
our partnerships and dogs PDF (59kb)
our work PDF (55kb)
our people PDF (58kb)