Meet Christy and guide dog Lola
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Christy Wood & guide dog Lola
Southaven, Mississippi
Christy stands while Lola sits by her side.
Christy Wood is happiest when surrounded by people, whether family, church friends, or the other moms in the baseball bleachers. “I want to be in the middle of everybody,” she says. When her vision deteriorated from retinitis pigmentosa, forcing Christy to give up driving and to quit the job she loved as a mammography technician, she spent a year isolating at home. “But that’s not my personality!” she says. Now she’s been matched with her first guide dog, Lola, a people-loving black Lab with a personality just like Christy’s.
It hasn’t been easy, facing her fears, but Christy credits her friends and God with nudging her in a positive direction. “I walk by faith and not by sight,” she says, quoting a favorite Bible verse. “I had two kids watching and learning from me and my good friend said, ‘You’ve got to snap out of it!’” Christy decided to apply for a guide dog but hoped to get in shape first, so she joined a couch-to-5K group at her church, jogging while tethered to a friend. And now with Lola leading the way, she’s relishing her new freedom. “My first walk with her in harness, the tears just flowed. It was the best feeling in the whole wide world. I haven’t walked alone in a long time and not felt afraid!”
Lola is sponsored by the Dorothea & Fletcher Gleason Family Foundation and named in loving memory of Linda Saunders’ Weimaraner, Lola, who was just one year old when Linda’s husband passed away in a tragic plane accident. Lola became Linda’s reason to get out of bed every morning and gave her the will to live again. Although Lola has passed away, her memory lives on.
