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Angela’s story: Guide Dogs, gratitude, and giving back.

For over 40 years, Angela has relied on her Guide Dogs to help navigate daily life, with each partnership bringing connection, confidence and independence. Angela received her first Guide Dog in Ireland in 1982. Now aged in her seventies and living on the Central Coast of NSW, Angela is partnered with her sixth Guide Dog, Jolie. When it comes to her latest Guide Dog, Angela jokes that she got exactly what she ordered: a laid-back, two-and-a-half-year-old dog who fits seamlessly into her lifestyle. 

“I do a lot of fundraising, so I wanted a dog who’d be happy to sit around for a couple of hours while we operated our stall, selling merchandise. As well as a dog that would be happy to be out of harness to allow people to come up and talk to her and let children give her a pat.” 

Before she was paired with Jolie last year, Angela planned ahead with Guide Dogs NSW/ACT so she wouldn’t have to go a single day without a life-changing companion. “My 11-year-old Guide Dog, Piper, retired on the 19th of May, and I got Jolie the next day.” 

Her two girls get on well. “They’re great buddies,” says Angela. “They play a lot in the garden together.” 

Angela reckons that, despite being much older, Piper has more energy than Jolie now. Probably because Piper gets to relax at home while Jolie guides Angela along the streets, on public transport, through shopping centres and around the Central Coast.  

When she’s off duty, Jolie loves to go for walks and relax by the water, happily watching the world go by. Or she’ll curl up in front of the fireplace at home, a habit she picked up while being puppy raised in Canberra. 

Getting around the Central Coast confidently with Jolie. 

Angela lives an active lifestyle that includes volunteer work for Guide Dogs NSW/ACT, being part of the Country Women’s Association (CWA), catching up with friends at local cafés, giving talks at events about being a Guide Dog Handler, and spending quality time with her family and friends—all activities that are made easier by Jolie’s highly trained assistance. 

With just two percent vision in one eye, Angela says Jolie takes a huge mental load off by giving her the freedom to move around without worrying about obstacles. “I can go out in the morning, and I might need to go to the chemist, so I ask Jolie to find the traffic light and find the chemist. It lets me relax and just listen to the sounds of birds and nature around me,” she says. 

Jolie is also a huge help at the supermarket. With specialist training from a Guide Dog Trainer, and lots of repetition, Angela and Jolie learned the supermarket layout so well that clever Jolie now helps with the grocery shopping. “I can go to the supermarket now, and I can tell her to find the shopping baskets, and she’ll find the baskets. Then I say I need bananas, and she brings me straight to the bananas. Then I’ll say I need milk, and she takes me right over to the milk,” Angela says. 

Angela enjoys going out to a café with friends from the CWA on Wednesdays. She and Jolie are warmly welcomed by local venues, but Angela still faces some accessibility challenges—such as needing her friends to read the menu to her. Recently, though, she’s been experimenting with AI glasses that read printed text aloud, giving her even more independence. 

Giving back to Guide Dogs NSW/ACT—one fundraising stall at a time. 

In 2009, Angela and her late husband moved to the Central Coast to be closer to their daughter Edele, son-in-law and now teenage grandchildren. Bringing her Irish Guide Dog with her, Angela had to adjust not only to a completely new area but to an entirely new country. That’s when she first reached out to Guide Dogs NSW/ACT for help. 

“Guide Dogs absolutely went out of their way to give me orientation and make me feel comfortable around my area—to travel on the trains and buses—because it was a whole new ball game to me, a whole new life,” says Angela. 

Angela was so grateful to Guide Dogs NSW/ACT for their assistance that she wanted to support them in return. “The reason why I got involved with Guide Dogs was because I really wanted to give something back to them as they gave so much to me,” she says. 

So, she joined the Central Coast Guide Dogs Support Group. Sixteen years later, she’s still volunteering with them, running fundraising stalls and events across the region at least twice a month. The group is made up of dedicated volunteers who sell merchandise in shopping centres and Bunnings stores across the Central Coast, speak at functions and events, and build partnerships with local community groups—all to raise awareness and funds for Guide Dogs NSW/ACT.  

Angela’s 16 years of tireless volunteer work were recognised with a Lifetime Member Award at last year’s Annual General Meeting, honouring her dedicated service to Guide Dogs.  

“I feel so grateful to the people who give money to Guide Dogs NSW/ACT through fundraising, bequests, and donations at our stalls. The money goes towards training Guide Dogs to help people like me, as well as to people who are a lot younger who do a lot of travelling around the community. Without the support of donors, and the back-up from the Puppy Raisers looking after the dogs in their first crucial 12 months, we wouldn’t have our Guide Dogs—and we wouldn’t have our full independence, and that’s a fact,” she says.