RAYMOND – A Raymond boy with epilepsy was informed last week that he will soon receive help in his fight against the mysterious and incurable disease – a new service dog that will be able to sense when dangerous seizures are about to strike.
Seth Richards is an 11-year-old Jordan-Small Middle School student whose family lives on Thomas Pond in Raymond. Since the age of 6, he’s struggled with epilepsy, an affliction that brings him seizures that come without warning and sometimes cut off his breathing, leaving his family frantically trying to revive him. Oftentimes the seizures will harm him physically as he collapses to the floor.
But Seth was a happy kid last Thursday during a special event held at the Shaw’s in Northgate Plaza in Portland, where representatives from Milk-Bone, Shaw’s and Atlanta-based Canine Assistants were on hand to officially notify Seth and his family that he will receive a dog in 2012.
According to East Waterboro resident and Canine Assistants representative Kerrie Doyle, who struggles with epilepsy herself and says her service dog can help warn her of oncoming seizures, Canine Assistants has trained 950 dogs over the past 14 years for people struggling with conditions for which a service dog would be beneficial. A specially trained dog not only can sense seizures, but it can retrieve telephones and alert others if its master is in distress.
That extra set of eyes and superhuman senses will be a welcome relief to Seth’s family. Mom Susan, father Dwaine and 15-year-old sister Falon are currently Seth’s only support system and have to watch him almost by the minute, to the point that Susan doesn’t feel comfortable being in different room from her son. Sometimes, she said, being in the same room isn’t enough.
“Just recently I was standing at the sink doing dishes and we had a puzzle done on the table and Seth’s behind me at the table and he was having a seizure. You could hear him grabbing the puzzle and everything was going down on the floor,” Susan Richards said. “Everyday activities are so hard because you don’t want to leave him. Just going downstairs to do the laundry, even. It really is stressful. With a service dog to alert us if we’re not right there, or we’re in another room, that’ll be great.”
Seth has been on the waiting list for a dog for five years. But now, with last Thursday’s announcement, Seth’s guaranteed to have a dog in 2012.
Atlanta-based Canine Assistants will train and raise the dog for the next 14 to 18 months, but Canine Assistants’ dog training costs money, and that’s where Milk-Bone and Shaw’s come in. For the last 11 years, the two companies have been footing the bill for hundreds of service dogs such as the one Seth Richards will receive. Since each dog’s training program costs about $20,000, Milk-Bone picks up most of the tab, said Josh Maibor, who was at Thursday’s ceremony representing Milk-Bone.
“His dog will be specifically trained for Seth’s needs,” Maibor said. “So it’s really a fantastic program and we’re thrilled to be a part of it. And we’re thrilled to be able to tell them their wait is over.”
Once the dog’s training is complete, the Richards family will be flown to Canine Assistants’ facility in Georgia. And according to Seth’s dad, Dwaine, all the families that are scheduled to receive dogs will gather in a big room for an introduction ceremony.
“They take 15 families that go to this camp in Atlanta and they’ll have 15 dogs, which are all trained, and all the families are in a big room and then they let the dogs go and the dog picks you, you don’t pick the dog,” he said.
While times have been hard in recent years for the Richards family, with both parents out of work, Thursday’s ceremony and the thought that their son will get a new companion who can relieve some of their stress, is something they truly appreciate.
“It’s awesome. It’s just awesome,” Dwaine Richards said of the announcement.
And that’s a sentiment fellow epilepsy sufferer and Canine Assistants beneficiary Kerrie Doyle can attest to having had her service dog now for over a year.
“It’s such a change in your life,” Doyle said about Grainger, a soft and cute Golden Retriever named after Hermione Grainger of Harry Potter fame. “Not only you, but for everybody who touches your life. I’d feel lost with her. I couldn’t imagine leaving the house without her. You’d feel your one security blanket really isn’t there.”
Seth Richards of Raymond and Grainger, a service dog similar to the one Seth is scheduled to receive next year, take a break during a celebration last Thursday. Richards has been notified that he will receive a service dog from Canine Assistants in 2012. (Staff photo By John Balentine)Send questions/comments to the editors.
