By Tilly Walder
A walk along Ryde beach turned into an impromptu litter-pick recently for Island-resident, Helen Williams, thanks to one clever and determined dog.
Holly, an eleven-year-old rescue Springador, had been enjoying a run on the sands west of Ryde Pier when her owner, Helen, spotted a plastic cup drifting in the shallows. Not wanting to get her leather sandals wet, she asked Holly to retrieve it instead. Holly didn’t hesitate; she recovered the cup and happily traded it for a biscuit.
“That was it,” Helen said. “She promptly set about collecting all the plastic she could find on the sand and bringing it to me, some which she even had to dig out. She couldn’t pick up a glass bottle, but she dragged it over to me!”
A good few well-earned biscuits later, the paws-on clean-up crew had amassed a decent haul of discarded rubbish, all of which went into the nearby bins in Western Gardens.
Holly isn’t formally registered as an assistance dog, but she’s been carefully trained at home to support Helen, who lives with degenerative spine disease, arthritis, and an essential tremor. She picks up dropped items, delivers the post, fetches slippers, and even moves laundry to the washing machine.
The beach clean was second nature to Holly, who is already used to retrieving paper from the driveway and bottles from footpaths and parks. She and Helen have now added local beaches to their clean-up route!
But Holly’s story didn’t always look so hopeful. Re-homed at ten months, she came with a two-page behavioural warning from a family who had left her alone for ten hours a day, and labelled her aggressive, destructive, and untrainable.
“She was clever, just not taught,” Helen explained. “She’s now the best friend anyone could want!”
These days, Holly is also known for finding stray tennis balls, even those stuck in trees, which are then washed, packed in sixes, and donated to dog charities or given away.
“Litter is totally unnecessary,” Helen added. “If there’s no bin, carry it – I manage. So can others.”
Isle of Wight Observer