4 Paws for Ability trains and places quality task-trained service dogs with children with disabilities and Wounded Warrior veterans. Founded in 1998, the nonprofit organization accepts applications from candidates with a variety of disabilities. Unlike other organizations that train companion dogs, 4 Paws for Abilities trains canine service dogs that are specifically covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act to assist people with autism, Down syndrome, hearing loss, and other disabilities.

Training is costly, and families who apply for a dog must also agree to raise $15,000 of the $22,000 it costs to prepare a pup for helping its human.

Lehigh Valley resident, Ellie Stein, 5, has Down syndrome and is, according to her mother, “a runner.”

“She’s too big for a toddler carrier,” Morgan Stein explained. “She wants to explore but she has no sense of physical or stranger danger. She won’t hold my hand, and I worry that it’s too easy for her to run or walk off. Ellie’s outgrown all shopping carts except Wegmans’ carts, and when we’re out in public, she’s like a greased pig.”

This cute little blonde, who’s begun to talk and who attends Moser ES’s full immersion life skills class, has faced a lot of adversity in five years.

“We have her in many therapies,” Stein said. “She was in early intervention therapy shortly after she was born. Then she needed open-heart surgery when she was three months old, and she caught pneumonia.

“She needed a feeding tube because she forgot how to eat. So then we needed to get her speech therapy to reteach her how to eat. When she was a year, Ellie started occupational therapy to help develop her fine motor skills.”

While she can’t quite balance steadily, she’s still quite good at walking off on her own.

“We had a Memorial Day picnic this past May,” Stein said. “It was full of people who know and love Ellie. She was in a gated back yard full of people, but someone left the gate unlocked and she wandered out.

“We found her walking in the middle of the street two blocks away,” Stein said. “It was so scary.

“And while I can understand what she says, Ellie’s still pretty nonverbal,” she said. “I have the Tile, which I link to my Bluetooth so that I can track her.”

Recognizing that keeping Ellie and her twin sister, Laurel, who doesn’t have any disabilities, safe was a real challenge, Stein began to research organizations that train dogs, hoping to find one that would be a good fit for her family. She knew a few people in the area who’d been matched with dogs from 4 Paws for Ability, and after looking a bit more, she fell in love with the organization.

“It’s such a well-ranked organization,” Stein said. “All the money goes right back into it. They have volunteers who train and foster the puppies. They’ve paired up with a local college and the students there also help with the training.

“And 4 Paws takes everyone, unlike other service or companion dog organizations. They are a 501(c)3 organization. I learned that the few agencies that do provide dogs for kids are either for-profit, have waitlists of up to five years, or are too hard to qualify for.”

As Ellie becomes more independent, the family wants to ensure she’s kept safe and sound. 4 Paws for Ability dogs not only keep children safe through tethering and search and rescue, but calm distressed kids and disrupt unwanted behaviors.

“Ellie can’t self-soothe. If she starts to cry, she cries until she throws up, and then she cries even more because she’s thrown up,” Stein said.

“A service dog would help her gain independence, and give snuggles and cuddles to help her break the cycle,” Stein said.

And if the unthinkable happened, a service dog is also trained as its owner’s personal search and rescue dog, so if Ellie did get lost, the dog could help find her.

The obstacle that the family faces? The cost of the training.

“Some people can raise the money in a few weeks. Others take a bit longer,” Stein said. “We’re hoping to have the money by Christmas. I’m doing lots of fundraisers, but I don’t want to inundate people with bracelets.”

It’s a complicated process to train one of these service dogs. Training takes 12 to 18 months, and several dogs are chosen per client, and it’s not until the client and her family visit the organization, in Xenia, Ohio, that the final dog is chosen.

“Once they start the puppy training, we’ll take and send videos of daily life – even Ellie at school – so that the trainers can incorporate everything about Ellie into the program. She’ll wear special undershirts that we’ll send, unwashed, to 4 Paws so that the dogs can get used to her scent,” Stein said.

After the dogs complete the initial training, the family will travel to Ohio to spend two weeks getting used to the dogs and taking their own two-week training class so that they too learn how to work with the dogs.

“Since Ellie’s still so young,” explained Stein, “she’ll wear a vest or harness which will be tethered to the dog. I’ll hold a leash that attaches to what the dog wears.”

A few weeks ago, Stein and her family set up a variety of fundraisers to help raise the funds needed to start the training process. The family must raise all the money it needs to contribute before the dogs are chosen and training begins, which means the entire process to match Ellie with a companion dog trained specifically for her can take up to two years.

Stein’s friends have stepped in to host a variety of home parties, including Scensty, Tupperware, and African Market Baskets. In addition, Stein set up a Facebook page www.facebook.com/4PawsForEllie) that she updates regularly and a website, (4pawsforellie.com) which lists current and upcoming fundraisers and provides information for anyone interested in donating.

Ellie’s official donation page is www.razoo.com/story/4-Paws-For-Ellie, and the family is not quite a third of the way to reaching its goal of $15,000.

“Little bits add up,” Stein said. “It’s a lot of money, but in the meantime, it’s constant vigilance. We’re always worried about Ellie escaping in school even though they know. And we can’t be everywhere with her 24-7.

“She’s so little and so fast, with a little hitch in her giddyup. We just want to keep her safe and encourage her independence safely.”