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Helen Smith was cleaning her bathroom and listening to the radio, some time after the pandemic, when a story came on about a shortage of guide dogs. The pandemic had made it hard to breed puppies. One vision-impaired owner faced a two-year wait for a new dog. Knowing the importance of her own relationship with dogs, Smith was overcome with sadness for him. Right then, she thought, “Well, what am I going to do with the rest of my life?”
She was living in the south of Hesse, in Germany, having moved in 1998 from Shropshire for her husband’s work. Their daughters were nine and three. The family settled. They got a dog. Smith found tutoring work and started a business teaching English.
But in 2011, her husband, Paul, died. “It was a great shock. Some sort of virus that affected his heart. He was 52,” she says.
“I thought, what do I do? Come back to England? Or stay in Germany and work really hard to support us?”
Smith decided to stay; her daughters were at critical points in their education. “Luckily we had the dog” – a bernese mountain dog. Soon after, they got a briard. “Dogs are so wonderful, because you don’t need to talk to them. They just understand.”
Dogs had been part of Smith’s family life since she was born. “My mum had type 1 diabetes. Unfortunately, she had a miscarriage, and lost her first child. My dad bought her a wire hair fox terrier puppy, called Nimby, to try to get her over this.”
After Smith came along, there were no further children, and Nimby was like a sibling. “I had a little tricycle and Dad made a pull-along trailer. There are pictures of Nimby sitting in there, me cycling up and down …”
Then, after Smith married, Paul brought home a puppy from a local builder – they called her Lotus. In time, Lotus helped their youngest daughter learn to walk. “She would hold on to the dog’s collar and walk beside her.” We are talking on a video call, and Smith glances down at the dog at her feet – Blossom, a labrador.
“When you come up to a certain age, you think, am I continuing on this path or am I going to do something a bit different?” Smith says.
She had been feeling “increasingly isolated. My children had left home before Covid … I was devastated by Brexit.” She also began to question her language skills. “Every time an official letter came through the letterbox, I had this fear arising in me.
“I thought there must be more to life than working in my garden, working on my business, and seeing my family occasionally.”
By June 2022, she knew she wanted to return to the UK. “I had this idea that I would look after a ‘guide dog mum’” – a dog that will provide puppies to be trained. “But my confidence was low. I thought, ‘You live by yourself. They won’t want you … I’m too old.’”
Smith had grown up in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, a short drive from the Guide Dogs National Centre (formerly known as the National Breeding Centre). “It was something we all knew about.”
She whittled the contents of her house down to a truckload. “I was letting go of 25 years of being in Germany.” She returned to Warwickshire and the day after she moved into her new house, she applied to look after a guide dog mum. Within a month, Blossom was brought to meet her.
“And when she ran into the room, it was, Oh my goodness, she’s so big! Oh my goodness, she’s so lively. The first week, I got up at six. I was so excited to go downstairs and see her.”
It sounds like love. “It is,” Smith says.
Guide Dogs pays for Blossom’s vet bills, insurance and food. When the time comes, the puppies will be born at Smith’s home, with support from a vet at the end of the phone. She will look after them for seven weeks, before they start their guide dog training.
Blossom has brought Smith new friends, and a community. Now, fellow villagers drop off newspapers for when the puppies come, and Smith has joined Guide Dogs fundraising groups.
Blossom’s lanyard – it says “Guide Dog Mum” – starts conversations. “I go out and have dinner at the cafe, and she’s lying at my feet. If I hadn’t got her, I would never go to a cafe by myself. Blossom has given me confidence to do all sorts of things.”
