People fall in love every day, but how often do their dogs bring them together? And they're not just any dogs, as soon-to-be married couple Claire Johnson and Mark Gaffey are blind, and their dogs are seeing eye guide dogs who lead them to fall in love, KSL reports.
Johnson met Gaffey during a training course for their guide dogs, the two canines, Rodd and Venice, immediately running to each other and becoming instant friends. Over the two-week course, the dogs became inseparable.
"During the training out two dogs, Rodd and Venice, seemed to know something we didn't," Gaffey, 52, told the Telegraph. "They were always playing together and nuzzling up together." Gaffey said that even the trainers noticed the attraction between the dogs and called their match-up the "love and romance of the course."
Johnson, who had lost her eyesight due to diabetes at the age of 24, made the first move and invited Gaffey out for coffee when the course came to an end.
"We connected straight away," Johnson, now 50, said to the Telegraph. "I remember Mark texting me saying 'If you'd let me I could make your world a lot happier'." After a number of doggy playdates, Johnson and Gaffey began spending more and more time together, their dates lasting longer as the two formed a bond as close as their dogs.
"Each time we met the lunches were getting longer and the waitresses were tapping their fingers waiting for us to leave," Gaffey said.
Soon enough, they fell in love. Gaffey proposed to Johnson on camera for the British ITV show "Me and My Guide Dog," repeating the proposal four times so the camera crew could get the perfect shot.
"It was a lovely surprise when he proposed the first time on Valentines' Day, but I got proposed to four times that day because he kept going down on one knee," Johnson said. "I suppose I can never say I will forget the day I got engaged. And it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for our dogs."
As for their pooches, Rodd and Venice are still "very much in love," the couple says, sleeping in the same dog bed together and "are as much as a couple as me and Mark," according to Johnson.
Though he doesn't necessarily believe in fate, Gaffey does think the coincidence of he and Johnson signing up for the same course was a big one.
"We could have easily missed one another by a week because it was a residential course and we just happened to be put on the same one," Gaffey said. "It's ironic we met there because we discovered that we only lived a mile-and-a-half away from each other but had never met. We were purely in the right place at the right time.
Johnson and Gaffey plan to get married next March, and of course, their dogs will play a special role in the ceremony...as ring bearers!
"They will be walking us down the aisle and be ring bearers," Johnson said. "This wedding is down to them."
