Meet the seven tiny puppies who will become future life-savers in Milton Keynes

The puppies were born to one of their most successful dogs, black Labrador Narla, and all are destined to become life-savers in the future.

The three girls and four boys will start the charity’s lengthy training programme as soon as they are old enough.

Medical Detection Dogs trains dogs to use their amazing sense of smell to support people with life-threatening health conditions, sniffing out problems and saving their lives on a daily basis.

Their Medical Alert Assistance Dogs can identify minute odour changes emitted prior to an emergency and alert the person to take preventative action. They work for people with Type 1 diabetes, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (PoTS), Addison’s disease, severe allergies, endocrine disorders and episodes of sudden health deterioration.

The charity also has Bio Detection Dogs, which carry out ground-breaking research to improve early diagnosis of cancer and other diseases.

To give the new puppies, along with other young trainee dogs, the best chance of future success, they will go to puppy socialisers when they are old enough to leave Narla.

But the charity is in urgent need of more socialisers and has put out a special appeal for local people to come forward.

You can apply here.

A spokesperson said: "The early development of our puppies is really important and socialising is a fantastic opportunity for you to be part of the team that helps turn them into future life-savers.”

Socialisers need to be within travelling distance of the centre, attend regular puppy classes and be with the dog for most of the day.

They should regularly visit lots of different environments and use various forms of transport to socialise a puppy and also have a secure, dog-friendly garden.

The charity provides food and equipment for the puppy and covers all veterinary costs, as well as giving its socialisers plenty of support and advice.

It can take up to two years to train a puppy and costs £29,000 to care for, train, place and support a dog and their partner to become an accredited assistance dog team.

Meanwhile, people or businesses can sponsor one of the new puppies or even name one. Details are here.