Children from regional WA who need hospital treatment must often travel long distances to the city, and many miss their working dogs back home. But a Lake Grace farmer is aiming to solve that with a unique project called Kelpies for Kids.
00:00Today is a very special day for Talia Lestia and her mother.
00:07I finished my treatment.
00:09Yeah.
00:10Yeah, so we're just in a monitoring phase and still a lot of medications and things,
00:16but yeah, we don't have to go to hospital every two weeks anymore.
00:19Yeah.
00:20You alright?
00:21Yeah.
00:22It's been a long journey for Talia and her family to these yards
00:26at Arthur River in Western Australia's Wheatbelt.
00:29Diagnosed with a brain tumour when she was just two,
00:33she's been battling cancer for the past six years.
00:37Talia is one of a group of ten country children diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses,
00:43brought together by Lake Grace farmer Kate Wilcox.
00:47She saw how lonely country kids get when they spend weeks in Perth's Children's Hospital.
00:53Last year I was stung by a swarm of bees
00:57and ended up going into premature labour.
01:00So we had five months in Perth waiting for our daughter to be born,
01:04so we were close to medical treatment.
01:06And I said to my husband,
01:08we're lucky I understand why we've got to be here,
01:12but what about all the poor little kids that, you know, don't understand
01:16not being able to go back to their farms and friends and dogs?
01:20So she recruited a group of WA's top working dog trainers to teach nine working dog pups as part of a project to provide companions for sick children in hospital.
01:34In a few weeks they'll be auctioned at Perth's Royal Show,
01:38the money raised to go to the Telethon Child Health Research Institute.
01:43We kind of hope with Kelpies for Kids that we can raise the awareness of the extra issues that,
01:48you know, they don't get to go home in between treatments quite often
01:53because there's not the medical support services if needed.
01:57The auction will be held on October the 3rd at the Perth Royal Show.
