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Jacksonville 8-year-old with epilepsy in need of seizure alert dog

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — It’s been an uphill battle for Catherine Osias. Her 8-year-old daughter, Kailey, suffers from silent seizures and was diagnosed with epilepsy last Feb.

The condition is a neurological disorder impacting the central nervous system in which brain activity becomes abnormal, often resulting in seizures, according to Mayo Clinic.

It’s taken Catherine months to learn the signs to spot before her daughter has a seizure.

“I have to know where she’s at at every given point in this house because her seizures are so dynamic,” Catherine said.

Even then, Kailey is always at risk.

That’s why they’re taking the steps to put their family dog Kairo through service dog training.

“A service dog will be able to smell a seizure coming on,” Catherine said.

Catherine had no luck finding a dog trainer who would take Kairo in until Canines 4 Hope came along.

Now Kairo is enrolled in a six-month course to become a seizure alert dog. These dogs are trained to summon help during a seizure, pull objects away from a person, sense an oncoming seizure and more.

As a pure-bred golden retriever, Kairo made the perfect candidate. But that special training isn’t cheap.

“It’s $12,000 for the training just for me to pay just for the standard training,” Catherine said.

It’s a staggering price tag on top of Kailey’s ongoing medical bills.

“I’m just scraping, scraping where I can. Asking. Borrowing,” Catherine said.

But she says having a service dog is not a want but a need for Kailey.

“I’ve been told multiple times if it doesn’t go right with her seizures she can die. This is a disease that they die from,” Catherine said.

Through two online campaigns on Help Hope Live and GoFundMe, a little donation will go a long way for the two.

The use of Kairo as a service dog will relieve Catherine of some of her duties watching Kailey so she can work more.

“I would hate for finances to be the reason why I lost my child,” Catherine said.

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