An equestrian yard and a diabetic alert dog charity have been able to make the most of lockdown restrictions by using the downtime to socialise puppies around horses.
The specialist charity Hypo Hounds needs to introduce its puppies to as many different environments as possible but had been struggling to find suitable public locations because of Covid.
Social distancing poses a particular problem when training puppies as the dogs need to be free to investigate new environments. The dogs are usually encouraged to use their noses, as in medical environments they use scent to save lives.
Hypo Hounds trains puppies for use by type 1 diabetics, who can have little to no awareness of their blood sugars dropping (hypoglycaemia) or rising too high (hyperglycaemia).