PUPPIES are waiting to be born and looking forward to being vital helpers for their humans when they grow up and have finished school – but before their new lives start, they'll need names.
And that's where you come in – by entering a competition via Specsavers in Spain.
Oh, how cute - and you'll get a picture of one, a certificate, a designer sunglasses voucher and a bag of goodies if you successfully name one of these bundles of adorableness. These little furballs each cost €40,000 to train, but are a huge asset to their visually-impaired owners
October is International Blindness Awareness Month, and for people in Spain with limited or no vision, the national lottery-funded charity ONCE is a huge source of information and assistance, especially through its guide dog foundation which breeds, trains and allocates over 100 of these essential friends every year.
Although it costs around €40,000 to train a guide dog – a journey they embark on from birth – they are given free of charge to those who need them, except if the new owners are able to give a voluntary donation.
They are, of course, more than just reliable pets; guide dogs keep their owners safe when they are out of the house, and in it, too, which enables them to live much more independently than they otherwise could.
This is particularly true for those who have become blind or partially-sighted in adult life, rather than from birth, since adapting to a world where you cannot see what you used to be able to is much more difficult than having grown up acquiring the skills.
Around 400 people in Spain are on the waiting list for a guide dog, meaning all donations are welcome to help fund training and to care for the animals from baby puppies to fully-competent adulthood.
Specsavers Ópticas sponsors the ONCE guide dog foundation, and its 'name-a-puppy' competition is aimed at raising the profile of these necessary pets and the funds needed to school them properly.
The company has pledged to raise a minimum of €5,000 for the foundation before the end of the year, and donations can be made at any of their branches.
Whoever wins the puppy-naming contest will get a photo of the little person in question, with a certificate to prove their idea has been chosen, plus a Specsavers voucher for a pair of designer sunglasses, and a pack of gifts from the foundation.
All this, and you do not have to pay to enter, but through your own involvement, you will be helping to increase publicity for the ONCE dog-training scheme.
According to Specsavers' Jorge Martínez de Lizarduy Araico: “Names must start with the letter 'N', be short and easy for the dogs to hear, and cannot be people's names.”
The latter is important, because if someone out in public calls out to a person with the same name as the guide dog, he or she may interpret it as a command.
Also, it could mean that a visually-impaired person with the same name as the dog would not be able to own him or her, due to the potential for confusion.
“[Names] can be for female or male dogs,” Jorge says.
“We'll select our favourite at the end of October and announce our winner and their chosen name.”
To enter, look up Specsavers Ópticas on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and 'like' or 'follow' their page, then send a message with the name you have chosen, or put it as a comment on the post referring to the competition.
And if you aren't online, you can complete a form by pen at any Specsavers branch in Spain and hand it in to the staff.
In the province of Alicante, Specsavers can be found in the towns of Jávea, Calpe, Benidorm, Guardamar del Segura, Torrevieja, and on the urbanisation La Zenia in the Orihuela Costa area.
For the province of Málaga, branches are open in Marbella and Fuengirola, and in the Balearic Islands, Specsavers operates in Santa Ponça, Mallorca.
A short, sharp name beginning with 'N' that's not a human name in Spanish or English – ideally, not in French, German or any other common European language, either – it's not as easy as it sounds.
But you've got another two-and-a-half weeks to get creative, or to start thumbing through the 'N' section in a handful of dictionaries in different languages.
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