Neil's Unplanned Paw-triot Act

When SSEN Distribution’s Neil Phillip set out to visit a Priority Services Register customer in rural Aberdeenshire, the last thing he was expecting to do that afternoon was reunite a frightened dog with its owner. 

As part of our preparations for a Planned Supply Interruption (PSI) – where, for safety reasons,  we need to turn off the power in an area where we’re working on the network – we’ll contact all customers who are signed up to our free Priority Services Register (PSR) who have a particular need for power, for example if they have electric-powered medical equipment. We do this to make them aware the power will be going off,  and to check if there is anything we can to help during that period. And if the customer isn’t contactable by phone, one of the project team will visit them to ensure they know about the planned interruption.  

When Neil was driving to visit one such PSR customer ahead of a recent PSI, a dog shot past him at such a rate that Neil knew straight away that this wasn’t a furry friend excited to be playing ‘fetch’, it had obviously been spooked and was running away in fright.  

Neil takes up the story: 

“As soon as the dog flew past me, I realised that something was amiss and so, after I managed to find a safe place to park, my next task was to try beckon her over and convince her that I was trying to help. She was clearly still very frightened, but when she saw I meant no harm, it was no problem getting her into the van. I laid out my PPE jacket on the passenger seat as a makeshift bed, gave her some water from my lunchbox and she soon calmed down and started to doze off.” 

Although the woods near to where Neil parked his van are a popular dog-walking area,  his enquiries there were unsuccessful, so he returned to his van to plan his next move and to check on his new friend’s welfare. It wasn’t long after that he got a tap on the window from a woman who turned out to be the dog’s owner, asking if he’d seen her on his travels.  

“The owner was obviously very worried that she’d never find her dog, and so when I showed her snuggled up on my jacket in the van her panic immediately turned to relief,  and then to great excitement at being reunited. The owner thinks that she must’ve got a fright from something in the forest and hot-pawed it out of there as fast as possible. It’s not every day that’s eventful as this one, but I’m so happy to have been able to help. And after checking with the owner that everything was OK, I said goodbye and set back out on my way to visit our Priority Services Register customer.”

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