Heart Fur Adelaide

Heart For Adelaide is an award given out by the Roadies to people who demonstrate amazing care and love for the Adelaide community. We wanted to share this special story of the 2019 winners with all of you.

Back in 2019, the Heart For Adelaide award was given to David and Rassilon the dog, David’s faithful four legged friend. The two of them showed immense care to those around them. After retiring from therapy dog work, the two of them visited nursing homes to brighten the residents’ days.

David says: “Community Visitors Scheme is a volunteer organisation that tries to pair up a volunteer to visit with (mostly) elderly nursing home residents. It is really rewarding when you find the right person to visit and they tell you about their life. I recently visited a 100 year old gentleman, and it was so interesting listening to his stories, and then sharing some of my stories with him.”.

Sadly, Rassilon very recently has peacefully passed away, with David by his side. He was a very wonderful, well natured dog who brightened the lives of many people, including cancer patients. According to David, Rassilon was the visitor, and David was the person driving him around! In the audio clip in part 3 below, David talks about how Rassilon would jump up ready to go at the words ‘visiting day’. He was a gorgeous dog and will be dearly missed by those he visited.

So, we would like to introduce Evie, a 19 month old puppy, who has taken on the mantle! David says that she is very nervous, but does a great job meeting all the people.

David says: “GAP, or Greyhounds As Pets found both Rassilon and Evie for me. They rehome ex-racing greyhounds, but they try to pair the dog up with a suitable owner. And I can say that with both Rassilon and Evie, they have done that for me. Greyhounds are gentle and sociable dogs and make wonderful pets, Sadly a lot of people see the muzzle, which is only a government regulation, and think they are vicious, which couldn’t be further from the truth. And as for therapy or visiting work, they are just perfect. They have great temperaments and just the right height for patting, whether the person be standing up, sitting down or in bed. And as an added bonus, despite what they are bred for, they really are lazy dogs requiring very little walking.

Rassilon was an exceptional dog who, at 9 years old,  was able to visit the homes and not have to wear his leash. Evie isn’t at that level yet, but then again, she is only 20 months old and has only been visiting for 5 weeks compared to Rassilon’s 5 years. So Evie is definitely improving as a visitor, and by the time she is 9 years old, she will be walking without her leash too. Admittedly, my time is different as a visitor because of Evie. Most of the time we do not visit an individual resident, we are allowed to wander around the homes and let Evie meet as many people as we can, but most visitors will get the one on one meetings.”

Jodie and Pomfus talked about Rassilon on their Saturday show recently, which you can hear below. They also play the original interview with David (and Rassilon) when they were presented with the award, where they talk more about the amazing effect that Rassilon had on people. One special example is Rassilon helping one patient with high level dementia to smile (Part 2).