![\"Ann](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/23VWFENMDJCZVIJ62NMSDWVYDE.JPG\")
Ann Casey and her guide dog Finlay. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw <\/p>\nAt Ann Casey\u2019s home in Mullingar, her guide dog Finlay, a black retriever, bounds out the front door to greet us wagging his tail. You might expect a quiet companion reassuringly poised in the background, not a scampering pup. Yet, as soon as Casey calls his name and slips his smart leather harness over his neck, it\u2019s an instant transformation \u2013 like she\u2019s hit an on-button. <\/p>\n
Now calm and alert, Finlay surveys the room, awaiting Casey\u2019s movement. As she makes her way towards the door, he takes the lead. <\/p>\n
Finlay is the seventh guide dog Casey has owned, following Luther, Quiver, Carrie, Cliff, Tayto and Zebidee. <\/p>\n
Casey was born with a rare degenerative eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa, which meant her eyesight gradually went very bad. Having been diagnosed at birth, she attended a boarding school for the blind, and learned Braille at the age of eight. \u201cI was quite a good typist at 11,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n
In the late 1970s, when she was 28 years old, she was living in Mullingar and nursing a young baby. \u201cI heard something on the radio about them setting up a guide dog centre in Ireland,\u201d Casey says. She made contact with the organisation and began the process of applying for a guide dog for herself. <\/p>\n
She was one of the first participants accepted on to the programme. It was a huge step to take, which involved leaving her young baby at home to travel to Cork for four weeks. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy husband left me up to Heuston Station and put me on the train. I started roaring crying,\u201d she says. \u201cI just didn\u2019t know what to think \u2013 I knew nothing really about it.\u201d <\/p>\n
The training facility on Model Road in Cork had been set up by the co-founders of the Irish Guide Dogs, Mary Dunlop and Jim Dennehy, in 1976. <\/p>\n
\u201cMrs Dunlop brought me up to her house a few times. They made me feel really welcome,\u201d Casey says. <\/p>\n
Four weeks later, she returned to Mullingar, a baby in one hand and a leash leading her first guide dog, Luther, in the other. \u201cI had to learn how to have the sling for the baby, and how to walk with the dog, and how to manage it all,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n
While Mullingar hadn\u2019t seen the likes of it before, she remembers how warmly her guide dog was received in the town, where \u201ceverybody knew everybody\u201d. <\/p>\n
Dublin was less receptive. \u201cI was refused a couple of times, once in an Italian restaurant,\u201d she says, remembering an incident from the early 1980s. \u201cI had two friends with me and I was embarrassed.\u201d <\/p>\n
But her experience was not defined by those \u201crare\u201d negative encounters, she says, but rather the instant changes Luther brought to her life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very happy because I could walk independently to work \u2013 it was nearly two miles,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n
Opportunities previously unthinkable such as flying to England became a possibility, with a guide dog curled up on the seat next to her \u2013 \u201cnow, they won\u2019t allow you to do that\u201d \u2013 and to pursue her other passions, such as athletics. <\/p>\n
Ann Casey and her guide dog Finlay. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw <\/p>\n
\u201cI joined the athletic group in Dublin for the visually impaired, and every couple of weeks I\u2019d go up to do a bit of training.\u201d Luther would wait dutifully for her while she was out running. <\/p>\n
Almost five decades and six dogs later, she is well adjusted to life with a guide dog. She affectionately lists the quirks of her current dog, Finlay, as he chases his tail beneath the kitchen chairs. <\/p>\n
\u201cWell, he doesn\u2019t do the cooking,\u201d she jokes, \u201cbut he\u2019s great at finding doors to places and knows the places I normally go.\u201d He has a knack for bringing her to the till at supermarkets, to find people to help her with the shopping. And \u201cthe companionship is lovely\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the late 1970s Casey trained alongside Pat Kenneally, the very first person in Ireland to formally receive an Irish guide dog. Kenneally, from Kanturk in Co Cork, had lost his eyesight years earlier when a routine cataracts operation went astray. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe would\u2019ve been an outgoing guy \u2013 had a few drinks, played a bit of sport, like most normal young lads, and had a young family,\u201d says his son Anthony.<\/p>\n
Anthony remembers a negative energy in the house \u2013 his mother had to take up work, and his dad left the house less and less frequently. Before he was matched with his guide dog, Anthony said his dad hadn\u2019t left the house in two years. <\/p>\n
![\"Dory](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/WXA37P372REDTOEPPXRFCP4GWE.png\")
Dory is the 50th puppy socialised by long-time volunteer Emma O’Neill <\/p>\n
Anthony was about nine when his dad brought home his first dog, Turk. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll never forget that. Just the energy of the pup. I remember coming down into the sittingroom and the dog just biting everyone\u2019s feet and everyone jumping up on sofas, and that energy a pup brings,\u201d Anthony says. <\/p>\n
Shortly after, Pat left to go train at the Irish Guide Dogs Centre on Model Road. Although not far from the city, Anthony says his father might as well have been in France. He, his mother, and his two younger sisters would squish into a phone box to call him. On his return he was armed with a \u201cnew-found confidence\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took a lot of courage from my dad to be able to go and say, right, I\u2019m going to trust this dog. This is a new thing. This is going to be beneficial for me and my family, and it might help somebody else going forward.\u201d <\/p>\n
Anthony says inner-city Cork rallied around his father and Turk, even though \u201ceverybody was awestruck\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just see a guy walking down the road, then obviously see that he\u2019s blind. It was a new thing,\u201d Anthony says. \u201cHe\u2019d be able to go down to the pub and have a few drinks with the guide dog, and then go home.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was no guarantee that the match made between Turk and Pat would work out. Nowadays, Irish Guide Dogs have more sophisticated methods of matching dogs to their companions, but back then, Anthony says, it was just meant to be. \u201cMy dad had a certain relaxed way. I think that helped.\u201d <\/p>\n
![\"Roy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/NJOVHN2J2FNHDPI55KNKOMOIRY.jpg\")
Roy Keane, a longstanding Irish Guide Dogs supporter, with trainee guide dog Ella in 2009. Photograph: Alan Betson <\/p>\n
While his dad was adjusting to the new guide dog in the family, Anthony was out playing football in the Mayfield suburbs with one Roy Keane<\/a>. Years later, after a celebrated international football career, Keane would go on to become the first ambassador for Irish Guide Dogs. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a coincidence,\u201d says Anthony. Pat died in 2016.<\/p>\n Hundreds more blind people went on to have their lives changed after Pat Kenneally and Ann Casey laid the tracks for more visually impaired people in Ireland to be matched with a guide dog. <\/p>\n As the Irish Guide Dogs association grew over the next three decades, much of the infrastructure for the charity replicated successful models in the UK and the US. But in 2005 the charity broke barriers and became the first in Europe to train assistance dogs for children with autism<\/a>. <\/p>\n For Nicola Ryan and her son Tommy, life before and after receiving an assistance dog in 2014 was night and day. <\/p>\n \u201cTommy would be on the more challenged end of the spectrum, and Otto made the difference of being able to leave the house or not,\u201d Nicola says. \u201cIt opened up the world for him.\u201d <\/p>\n There had been a constant checklist flashing in Nicola and her husband Pedro\u2019s minds every time they would leave the house with Tommy, who she describes as \u201ca real bolter\u201d. <\/p>\n \u201cOkay, where are the escapes? How fast could he get out the door? How busy is the road outside?\u201d she recalls having to constantly calculate. \u201cWe even had to consider the kind of clothes he wore, in case we had to catch him quickly.\u201d <\/p>\n When Otto came along, the family was struck by how quickly he and Tommy became accustomed to each other. On the very first night, he and Tommy shared a bed. <\/p>\n \u201cHe was this amazing physical and emotional anchor for Tommy,\u201d says Nicola. New spaces can be overwhelming from a sensory point of view for children on the spectrum, and that Otto\u2019s presence grounded Tommy no matter where they were. <\/p>\n \u201cIt totally took that high anxiety element out of it, in terms of Tommy being physically safe and not running away,\u201d Nicola says. \u201cSimple things became easy, and then other, more complicated things like taking a flight became possible if you planned it through.\u201d <\/p>\n![\"Tori,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/AKJEJFZKJZE3FCCOZ252QV3BJY.JPG\")
Tori, the first community dog from the Irish Guide Dogs employed in an Irish hospital setting, at St Luke\u2019s Hospital in Dublin. Photograph: Bryan O\u2019Brien\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n