Hi friends.

We’re reaching out today with something a little vulnerable but a whole lot important and if you stick with us to the end, we promise there’s a dog involved.

Our daughter Elsie is 6 years old. She’s hilarious, wildly creative, loves to tell jokes, and can turn any room into a party (whether you’re ready or not). But behind the sparkly humorous laughter, she’s dealing with a lot.

Elsie has idiopathic seizure disorder, meaning her brain sometimes throws a full-blown electrical tantrum with no warning, kind of like when your phone glitches, but in brain mode. Most of her seizures hit near the part of her brain that controls speech meaning she also has expressive aphasia. Don’t know what that is? Well, if things get scary, she can’t tell you either. Expressive Aphasia is when something confusing, frustrating, or overwhelming happens (like a seizure) she often can’t tell anyone what she needs because she cannot find the word in her brain and even if she could find the word, sometimes she forgets how to say it.

Due to her seizures being near Broca’s area (The speech/language bubble) she also has executive functioning disorder… think: brain GPS constantly “recalculating”. Due to the constant “Make a U turn here” in her thought processing… she needs bathroom reminders, constant supervision, and a lot of patience (some of which we had to borrow from the future).

On top of all of that, a symptom of her daily medication is insomnia. She has regressions in sleep frequently and often only sleeps 3-4 hours a night since she was 2. As parents, we’re like POW at this point. We’ve had enough sleep to function but not enough to function appropriately. Although we had a huge win this year as she started making her own sandwiches and getting her own drinks. No more parties in the kitchen at 2am!

Here’s the part where we ask for help:

We’re trying to get Elsie a specially trained seizure response dog. This is a specific dog who could literally save her life by detecting seizures early, staying by her side, fetching help, and even reminding her to go potty before it’s too late (you have no idea how magical that is until you live it).

These dogs are amazing.

And amazingly expensive.

Like $30,000+ expensive.

We need $12,000 to be put on the waitlist (hoping Winter 2025)

We need $12,000 when the puppy is born (hoping Spring 2026)

We need $6000-$10,000 when we pick the pup up to come live with us (hoping Spring 2028)

We have partnered with Tails For Life, one of the dog trainers specialized in seizure alert dogs, that is in Fond Du Lac, WI.

Thankfully this is SO CLOSE to home so we can visit the pup through all stages of life and allow Elsie and puppy to have a better connection from early on!

We’re not great at asking for help.

But for Elsie, we’ll do anything… literally anything.

So:

• If you can donate, we would be beyond grateful.

• If you can’t, please consider sharing this with your circle, favorite business, favorite news person, favorite celebrity, or go shout it from a mountain top.

• If you’re a business and would like to collab for a fundraiser, please talk with us. As stated, we’re willing to do anything for Elsie.

• If nothing else, Leave a kind note of encouragement for Elsie. While she cannot read yet, she loves hearing people are cheering her on and a good old fashion dad joke.. Plus we would appreciate it too since we’re running on caffeine, late nights, lots of laundry soap, and hope.

Thank you for loving our girl.

Thank you for reading this far.

Thank you for caring.

We’re excited to share updates of our future fur friend and as always, we appreciate any and all support.

Luke, Nicole, Addison, Elsie, Selah… and the fluffball yet to be named