Seizure Alert Dog for Adelaide

Adelaide needs your help!!   Adelaide is a loving, outgoing, and determined 8-year-old. Her smile is contagious, she gives 100% at everything she does, and she makes life fun! She loves riding horses, Disney princesses, playing babies, swimming, gymnastics, and playing dress up. Adelaide struggles daily with the impacts of Cerebral Palsy and Epilepsy. Her symptoms manifest as poor fine-motor skills, vision impairment, and inhibited oral-motor skills. Adelaide cannot communicate verbally, and as such, uses an augmented communication device that we often refer to as “her talker”.

In addition to all of these challenges, Adelaide also suffers from multiple daily seizures, which are triggered by sudden noises or by tripping over obstacles in her lower field of vision. Adelaide has had a history of seizures in her short lifetime, two of which have landed her in the emergency room and in extended hospital stays. For those who have never experienced a seizure, they can be a very scary event; imagine the fear of not being able to alert caretakers when you are having a seizure because you cannot speak.

After living with these challenges for years, we recently learned that a service animal may be able to assist Adelaide. We were very excited to discover that well-trained dogs can assist in seizure detection and alerting caretakers of ongoing seizures. What an amazing opportunity for Adelaide! After discovering the benefits and opportunities a service dog will provide, we are all very excited to get started on this journey to equip Adelaide with a friend that will help her stay safe, and help others know when she needs help. A service dog will provide Adelaide independence, confidence, companionship, and most importantly, seizure detection and alert.

4 PAWS for Ability is a fantastic organization that finds a dog to best match Adelaide’s needs and trains the dog to alert her parents when she is having a seizure. As you may imagine, this will provide great comfort for our family and safety for Adelaide, especially overnight when she is sleeping  alone in her room. And since Adelaide has vision challenges, she could be tethered to this service dog to provide stability and safety in new environments. Additionally, a service dog will provide Adelaide an opportunity to make friends and practice using her communication device when answering questions about her new companion.

As you can see, the addition of a service dog will be life-changing and will undoubtedly improve Adelaide’s quality of life. Training a dog for this level of service is quite expensive. Our family is raising funds to help cover the expenses of training and equipping a service dog to meet Adelaide’s specific needs. Our family would ask that you partner with Adelaide and donate how you can to help make this wish come true!

 Thank you very much for your support!!