This year our President, Amy Cooke, has selected Guide Dogs as her nominated charity. Almost two million people in the UK are living with sight loss that has a significant impact on their daily lives. Of those, around 180,000 rarely leave their homes alone and lead lonely, isolated lives.

Guide Dogs works for a world where people with sight loss are never left out of life, for a world where being blind or partially sighted is not what defines you. A world with enough support to make the challenges of sight loss no barrier to fulfilling hopes and dreams.

Help us NAME A PUPPY!

By donating to choose a name for a puppy, we can become part of a puppy's life-changing journey. Every pup named through Name a Puppy will help Guide Dogs deliver their ambition of every person with sight loss having the confidence and support they need to live the life they choose.

You can donate any amount you have available to the nominated charity through this page, but we do ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you are submitting a potential puppy name as we do need to raise the full £2,500 to be able to submit a name to Guide Dogs. If you are nominating a puppy name then please remember to state the name in the donation comment field.

Some guidelines for choosing a name for a puppy:

- Names will ideally be two syllables (such as Bram-ble) to help when training, and they can’t rhyme with any of their training commands.

- Please consider how the dog trainers and future owners may feel with any unusual or creative suggestions.

- Where possible suggest both male and female names, or gender-neutral names, as they won’t know if they will get male or female puppies until the pups are born!

Providing we reach the £2,500 target, at the end of the fundraising year (March 2024), we will select up to 10 of our favourite names from those submitted and run a LinkedIn poll to select the final name we submit to Guide Dogs. Do remember to follow us on LinkedIn to get involved and see all our posts relating to other fundraising events we will run for Guide Dogs: https://www.linkedin.com/company/insurance-institute-of-bristol/

Regardless of whether your puppy name is ultimately selected, here are some other examples of exactly what your donation could be used for:

£5 could support a working guide dog partnership for a day;

£25 could buy a white harness, the iconic symbol of a working guide dog;

£50 could buy an Off to School kit for a puppy moving into its first stage of training - puppy walking with a volunteer;

£120 could buy a Starter Kit for a new guide dog owner, containing everything they need to start a life with their new guide dog.

Please donate today to make a real difference!