Members of the community who were blind or vision impaired were invited to attend so that they could find out how SEDA could assist them and whether they were eligible to receive their own seeing eye dog.

National client services manager Harry Vanderjagt said the day was about explaining SEDA’s services and giving people an experience of what dog mobility was like.

Dozens of people from Wollongong and Shellharbour took advantage of the opportunity.

‘‘This is an excellent response,’’ he said.

‘‘We don’t train in this region because we don’t have the staff to service it. Our main base is Melbourne and we will have staff based in Sydney in the new year.’’

Staff, volunteers and existing clients talked to people about SEDA’s life-changing work in the Illawarra and gave demonstrations with seeing eye dogs.

Mr Vanderjagt said SEDA wanted to give people a better understanding of how seeing eye dogs could help transform lives of people who were blind or had low vision.

SEDA trainer and trainee instructor Emma Hedge trains puppies such as Utari, 16 months, who she brought up from Melbourne for people to meet.

‘‘We are giving them a trial experience with a seeing eye dog,’’ Ms Hedge said.

‘‘It is like a road test so they can see what it is like. Utari has been training for 16 weeks and he has got another eight weeks to go. I do the final stages of training. We train them for about six months.’’ 

Ms Hedge has generally trained up to four dogs at a time at SEDA’s training centre in Kensington.

It costs more than $30,000 to train one seeing eye dog and SEDA receives limited government funding.

For further information and registrations, visit www.seda.org.au or on 1300 84 74 66.