A 7-year-old in Antioch with narcolepsy found out she needed a service dog, and she has been looking for ways to pay for her puppy's training.
Hershey the puppy is a Labrador who likes to sleep.
"She's great, but sometimes she nibbles on me... Sometimes she licks on my face and it's salty and fishy!" Maddie Jordan said.
While most 7-year-old's would be excited to get a puppy, Maddie said it wasn't her first choice.
"No she's a cat kinda girl," Senetra Johnson Jordan said.
Maddie now understands that Hershey could save her life one day.
Maddie sometimes stops breathing. She suffers from sleep apnea, narcolepsy, and asthma.
"She like nibbles under my pillow and I was like, 'Ohhh.' She was telling me a sign that I was doing something," Maddie said.
Recently Maddie was on the monkey bars and fell asleep at Waverly Belmont Elementary School.
"My hand was just hanging on, and then I fell. I was crying on the ground," Maddie said.
She went to the emergency room with a hairline fracture.
"It was scary," Maddie said.
It was at that moment her mom started seeking help from more doctors.
"As a parent, it was a big wake up call," Jordan said. "All types of signs and flashing warning signs and my mind was like, this has to be done now, and I need some help."
Maddie has tried everything, including getting her adenoids out, but nothing has worked long-term.
They have now been seeing a pediatric sleep specialist.
"I suggested, 'Could she get the CPAP machine?' The doctor told us no. They said she sleeps too loud, we're afraid she'll get tangled in the wires and get choked," Jordan said. "Or she may get up and sleep walk and disconnect it, and then if she laid back down, stop breathing."
Doctors told her Maddie's only option was a service dog. Hershey needs to be trained to wake Maddie up when she stops breathing in her sleep.
"Listening for the number of times she coughs because I was told that's her grasping for air. So as a mother you know you're like on pins and needles all night long wondering when she's going to cough and that cough is going to be... it," Jordan said.
Service dog trainers advised them to find a puppy from a line of service dogs. Now that they have Hershey, it will cost a small fortune to train her.
"He was saying his fees are $15,000, and I was thinking, 'Lord, how am I going to get this done?' I don't have this," Jordan said.
Right now, Hershey and Maddie have been in the "bonding" stages of training. It will take one and a half years for Hershey to be trained.
Jordan Tolbert and Senetra are educators. They work for the MNPS Board of Education and at JE Moss Elementary School.
As educators with two kids and rent to pay, they don't have the money to pay for service dog training at this time.
If you would like to help them with a donation, you can visit their gofundme page.
