FROM tackling Mount Snowdon in her wheelchair to breaking Paralympic national records in archery, Amanda Davidson is not letting disability stop her from living life to the fullest - with a little help from her furry friends.
The 56-year-old and labrador Chris recently qualified as a successful Support Dogs partnership.
Chris has been trained by the Sheffield-based charity to help her with a range of every day tasks, from fetching her walking stick, picking up items Amanda may drop and closing doors to dragging the laundry basket around the house and loading the washing machine.
Chris is Amanda’s second support dog, with his successor, Jupiter, who started out as Amanda’s pet dog before being trained by Support Dogs, now putting his paws up as a pet dog again in well-earned retirement.
Already Chris is proving to be super-clever.
Amanda, who is married to Mark, said: “Even though Chris is only three and still has a lot of maturing to do, he is as good as Jupiter was when he retired.
“He is so fast at learning things - in one session we taught him how to help me fold my wheelchair and in another how to pull my office chair across the office to my desk.
“He can also retrieve my wheelchair if it gets blown away.
“He is so eager to learn.”
Amanda is a retired Metropolitan Police officer, whose career was cut short when she was injured in the line of duty aged just 29, and later contracted auto-immune disease lupus before suffering a stroke aged just 38.
She later worked for East Midlands Ambulance Service for 13 years, first as a call-taker and ending up as a serious case investigator - with Jupiter a familiar face in the office as he helped her navigate her working day.
She is now a case worker for the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman - and Chris helps her not only negotiate her commute via Meadowhall Interchange, stabilising her wheelchair when she unloads it from her car, but also helps by pushing access buttons, for instance on lifts and trains.
He instinctively also pushes buttons for automatic doors, conserving the little energy Amanda has so she doesn’t have to manoeuvre her wheelchair before they close.
Amanda added: “Having a support dog makes it so much easier to keep your independence to work.
“I was driving in before, but now we go by train and we do things like everyone else does.
“I don’t have to think everything through, about whether it’s feasible - we just do it.
“The time in between having Jupiter and Chris was psychologically devastating - it was like losing a part of you.”
Following her disability, Amanda had been left feeling isolated, but having her support dogs gave her confidence to get out and about.
Not only that, Amanda took on a series of challenges, becoming part of Team GB’s Paralympic potential archery team, conquering Snowdon and tackling a virtual London Marathon.
Amanda has committed herself to raising much-needed funds and awareness for Support Dogs, which trains and provides assistance dogs to help adults with a physical disability, as well as autistic children and adults with epilepsy.
Even prior to having her own support dog, Amanda and her children, Natasha, now 25, and Tyler, 21, were volunteer bucket collectors for the charity.
Volunteering made her feel empowered to get a pet dog, Jupiter, whom she got trained up a few years later.
It came after she bumped into a Support Dogs disability assistance client in Meadowhall 12 years ago.
“If I hadn’t met that client, our lives would be totally different,” said Amanda.
“It’s a life-changing charity - I was an active person and stopped from doing things as a police officer, to go to being someone that’s disabled.
“The dogs have returned me to being who I am.
“The difference the charity makes to people like me, as well as taking non-verbal autistic youngsters into confident teenagers and providing life-saving seizure alert dogs, is just unbelievable.”
