JOY GENERAL ORGANISER.

Joy is known as Glasshopper as she is the able assistant to Pauline. She helps to organise fosterers for all the dogs coming into the country and to organise homechecks prior to rehoming. She also often deals with enquiries from prospective adopters before passing them on to Lorraine. Like all of us, Joy has also fostered, done homechecks and has even been involved in transport runs despite her questionable sense of direction:)

For many years, Joy has been a puppy walker for the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and has proudly seen many of her babies grow up and qualify as fully fledged guide dogs but this time, her latest charge, Tara, is going to be a GDBA brood bitch instead.

Joy has always had the unenviable task of searching the Irish pages for dogs who are basically on death row, something which has given her nightmares on occasions, as it is heatbreaking only to be able to save a few. However, she has just handed over the reins on this to Jackie to free her up for maternal duties with Tara.

Although officially belonging to GDBA, Tara is regarded by Joy as being her own dog and she absolutely loves her to bits so her forthcoming pregnancy is going to be a mixture of excitement and worry until all is definitely well.

Her other dog is Fable, one of the puppies that she walked, who was also destined to be a guide dog, but was unable to pass all the rigorous tests involved, so Joy was more than happy to have her back permanently.