Texas community raises $50,000 to get support dog for police chief's sick daughter

A small community that has been taken care of by a police chief for more than 20 years has returned the favour after they found out his daughter needed a seizure response dog.

Residents of Decatur, Texas, are raising $50,000 in funds to buy a dog for the daughter of police chief Delvon Campbell, who has respiratory and pulmonary complications alongside cerebral palsy and epilepsy, WFAA reported.

Kynadee Campbell, 9, was born at 28 weeks weighing only 1.4 pounds and has endured various medical problems throughout her life.

Over the last Labour Day weekend alone, she had 25 seizures and was checked into Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth for about a month.

Her father, who works for the Decatur Police Department, told the local outlet she had to be hooked up to a ventilator for around 15 days to help her breathing.

“It didn’t matter what we did, they [the seizures] weren’t stopping,” Ashley Campbell, Kynadee’s mother, told WFAA. “There’s been several times we’ve almost lost her.”

Mr and Ms Campbell have three children in total, 15-year-old Addyson, and their nine-year-old twins, Kynadee and Ryleigh.

Riley told the local outlet that she finds it hard to sleep as she is worried about her twin sister.

“I’m scared she is going to have a seizure in the middle of the night,” she said.

After a long period in the hospital, Kynadee was finally told she could go home.

On a Facebook page dedicated to her medical updates, her family wrote that “she’s getting a little better every day, but still has a long way to go.”

A neurologist recommended that Kynadee get a seizure response dog, which could help the nine-year-old during and after a seizure.

According to a fundraising page for Kynadee, she stops breathing during her seizures and requires physical monitoring.

These specialised dogs can help to alert the family when someone is having a seizure, as well as comfort the person during their seizure.

However, these dogs do not come cheap, and on top of all the other medical expenses that the family pays, getting one is not so straightforward.

However, the local community heard that their police chief’s daughter was in need and prompted them to rally together to fundraise for Kynadee.

On the GoFundMe page named ‘K9 for Kynadee Campbell,’ the community has so far raised almost $43,000, edging closer and closer to their $50,000 goal.

The page explains that getting a dog will elevate pressure on the parents, who will have a specially trained dog to help them out with monitoring

“As one could imagine, caring for two busy girls, in addition to providing Kynadee around-the-clock care and monitoring are both mentally and physically exhausting, the page states. “We hope to be able to ease some of this burden by helping them acquire a Seizure Response Dog.”

Mr Campbell also told WFAA that people are also dropping their donations at the police station, many of whom had lost their own children.

“It really just makes you think, you know what, if we could all just kinda be that way, how much better our world would be,” he said.