Sophia, aka Beast and Honey Badger, is an avid wrestler who has been battling an unknown medical concern for 2+ years. She has recently been approved by 4 paws for ability to receive a service dog to assist her in life.

Sophia fights tonic clonic seizures, syncope episodes, panic attacks and more. She’s endured many hospital stays and countless tests to include EEGs, EKGs, CTs, MRIs, 30 day heart monitors, medication changes and more. 

Sophia is one of four children in the home and everyone is “on alert” for an event. A service dog will assist her with gaining independence and transitioning from an active teenager to a young adult. The service dog will be multipurpose trained specific for Sophia to provide seizure response, alert to seizures - she has zero feelings aka auras before a seizure which have resulted in many dangerous situations of concussions, etc., provide behavior disruption to assist when the mental health side of this journey becomes overwhelming and just provide peace of mind to the entire family to be able to rest assured her pup will alert us if something is wrong (especially during showers and/or sleep) etc. 

While Sophia has been approved, she will not be active on the waitlist until we raise all the funds. The entire process is roughly 2 years long and the whole family will spend two weeks at the training facility when the service dog is placed. We are humbly asking for any assistance from donations, shares, prayers, etc. nothing is too small. 

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out. Let’s help this girl make some lemonade! ???

Training a service dog to meet our child’s requirements can be very costly. On average it costs between $40,000-60,000 to raise, train, and place a service dog at 4 Paws for Ability. While 4 Paws for Ability fundraises to help cover a significant portion of this cost, families are tasked with raising $20,000 of that amount or $23,000 if receiving a poodle, doodle or papillon. We hope that we can receive assistance from our beloved family and friends to help make our service dog dream a reality.