A royal appointment

20 Feb 2024

HRH visit

It was a proud day for our charity as our Patron, her Majesty The Queen, hosted a reception for us at Clarence House to celebrate our 15th anniversary.

Her Majesty met clients with Medical Alert Assistance Dogs, our supporters and trustees and watched one of the first public demonstrations of our dogs detecting the odour of Urinary Tract Infection (UTI), as part of our new project. She also met some of our young puppies in training and received a special gift from trainee assistance dog, Maggie, who made a very waggy delivery of a limited edition pin badge.

Medical Alert Assistance Dog Spring, alerted our client, Michelle, several times before Her Majesty entered the event, meaning that she could meet our Patron safe in the knowledge that she wasn’t going to have a sudden Addisonian crisis. His colleague, Bear, alerted client, Demi to an oncoming PoT collapse shortly before Her Majesty’s arrival meaning that she too felt confident to greet her

The Queen then watched a demonstration by Bio Detection Dogs, Plum and Storm. Plum detected the odour of Urinary Tract Infections from samples on stands in The Hall, unfazed by the distractions and crowds. Storm then demonstrated how dogs are taking this research to reality by detecting the odour of UTI on a member of the crowd through passive searching, (directly sniffing).

Her Majesty has been Patron of MDD since 2014. In recent years she has seen many Bio Detection Dogs at work such as cancer detection dogs at Clarence House, Covid-19 detection dogs at MDD HQ and Paddington Station and she has met many Medical Alert Assistance Dog partnerships.

Before departing the event, Her Majesty said: “I’ve been Patron for ten years and the first time I went to visit Claire Guest in Milton Keynes it was almost a tiny little shed with just Claire and one or two others. Back then there was a lot of scepticism but as you’ve seen today, seeing is believing.”

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