“She has changed my world. There was a time that I was so low, and I didn't know how my life would turn out. My future is very bright now with Joyce, I can just do everything,” Sally says.
Sally has always been independent. Being able to work, stay active and socialise have always been priorities in her life, and ones that she had balanced with being a mother of two and a carer for her mother.
Then, in 2021, just three weeks after the passing of her mother, Sally woke up with warped vision following months of visual migraines, nausea and exhaustion. After 11 months of tests and feeling dismissed by medical professionals, Sally was diagnosed with visual snow syndrome, a rare neurological condition that leads to distorted vision and sensory issues.
Despite the critical support from her husband, Lindsay, and Vision Australia during this period, Sally still found herself withdrawing from society. “I wasn’t going out; I wouldn’t do anything,” she says. “My husband would ask me, ‘what do you want to do today’, and I would just shut down. I had lost all confidence, and I hated that I couldn’t see people. It was all very overwhelming."
When Sally’s Orientation and Mobility Therapist suggested she consider applying for a Seeing Eye Dog, she was initially full of self-doubt. “I was really hesitant at first. I just kept thinking, there’s got to be people that need it more than me. I felt like I wasn’t deserving,” Sally explains. “It wasn’t until a Seeing Eye Dogs trainer said to me, ‘stop this talk, you deserve a Seeing Eye Dog the same as anyone else, and I can see that you need one.’”
Not long after that, Sally was matched with Joyce, who she describes as a loving, loyal and intelligent girl who always looks out for her. “She has exponentially made my world a different place. I went through a hard time of feeling so low, but now I have her. She’s very good at what she does, and I have so much confidence in her,” she says.
