What can you do when your child needs a service dog, but you don’t have the money to pay for one? One boy decided to take matters into his own hands. He wrote a children’s book that his parents self published. The money from this book, and from donations, was more than enough for the boy to get his “seizure dog”.
Evan Moss is seven years old. He has been diagnosed as having epilepsy and has seizures that are quiet, and that happen at night.
His parents, Lisa and Rob Moss, know that their son’s seizures are silent. They cannot put a baby monitor in their son’s bedroom at night in the hopes of hearing when he has a seizure, because the seizures are so quiet. When Evan has a seizure, his parents must quickly give him medicine that will make the seizure stop. If this is delayed, then their son risks brain damage.
Obviously, his parents want to do everything they can in order to make certain that they don’t “miss it” when Evan has a seizure. Their solution was to do what some parents would call “co-sleeping”. In short, Evan is sleeping in the same bed with his parents every night. I think it is pretty obvious that this solution is not a permanent one.
What they needed was a service dog. There are service dogs that are trained to assist people who have a variety of special needs. In Evan’s case, he needed a dog that had been trained to notice when Evan was about to have a seizure.
The best way to explain how this works is that the dog would have been specifically trained to pick up on a scent that relates to a chemical change that takes place in Evan’s body that signals that a seizure is about to happen. The dog would then alert Evan’s parents, (by barking, or by nudging the parents with the dog’s nose), who could quickly dispense the correct medication to Evan.
The problem was that this type of service dog costs around $13,000, a price that would be difficult for any family. Evan came up with an interesting solution. He had written a short “children’s book” as part of the application for the service dog. He wanted to sell copies of it.
So, his parents self-published Evan’s book, which is called “My Seizure Dog”. The book has twenty-six pages, which include illustrations drawn by Evan Moss. The book costs $10.00.
Between the money that came in from the sales of the book, and the amount of money the family received from donations, Evan was able to afford his service dog. The family wants a poodle, or a poodle mix, because Evan’s mother, Lisa Moss, has an allergy to dogs. Poodles are less likely to aggravate her allergy. Evan is planning on creating a sequel to his book about his life after getting his seizure dog.
Image by Robert S. Donovan on Flickr