5K this Saturday aims to help raise funds for training of seizure alert dog
Dogs are man’s best friend. They provide comfort, companionship and in some cases, they even help their human pack members detect seizures in the early stages, which can be life saving. This was the hope of one Platte County mom, Dana Hughes, when she brought home a labradoodle named Clifford for her 12-year-old daughter Delaney, but the cost for training Clifford is quite steep — between $20,000-30,000. Because of this, Heidi Stoetzel, a woman from Hughes’ church, decided to organize a 5K run/walk fundraiser at 7 a.m. Oct. 5 at Platte Ridge Park north of Platte City to help the family train and support Clifford in his new occupation as a seizure alert dog. “It is really a pretty simple thing to do for a special little girl,” Stoetzel said. Currently, there are 15 confirmed runners with over 1,500 applications submitted as interested in the run. Twelve years ago, Hughes was told by doctors her baby, still in utero, had a severe condition called holoprosencephaly, a condition diagnosed as the brain failing to separate into its two distinct hemispheres and also characterized by facial deformities, and that if she made it past utero, she would not survive more than a day or two. But she did make it to a live birth five weeks early, and the doctors were wrong about the holoprosencephaly.