Bethany Rice is a teacher from Sweetwater Primary School, and also suffers from seizures. Â Some students at the school she teaches at got together, and raised money to train her dog Rocky to be a seizure detection dog.
Rice has had seizures, sometimes right in front of the students. Â While that can be scary for some, her students seem to have taken the situation as an opportunity to help out someone that helps them learn about music.
Rice says she’s very impressed with her students. Â They have even accepted responsibility for having specific “jobs” to do if Rice has one in class.
“We have assigned jobs. Â One is to go get Ms. Barger the librarian across the hallway. Â And then another one leads the rest of the kids out into the hallway to keep everybody calm,” explained Rice.
Another teacher, Angela Tuck said, “She had been having seizures at school and they come on so sudden she don’t know when they’re going to come.  So we started looking into things we could do to help her, and we thought of a seizure dog.”
Rocky, Rice’s new service dog, was donated to Rice from someone in Virginia. Â However, training a dog to be a seizure dog is expensive. Â Very expensive. Â So, how were they to come up with the money?
The students, other teachers and many people throughout community all donated. Â The kids also sold t-shirts, and held other fundraising activities. Â In total, they came up with $5,000!
“It was just overwhelming when they stepped up,” said Rice. Â “And I didn’t ask them to.”
