"Watch your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves."

It is an adage that has been passed down through generations, and students of the Steel Valley School District are hoping their pennies will add up to thousands of dollars.

The five schools in the district are in the midst of a penny war with the goal to raise $10,000 to help the family of 7-year-old Emily Hyland, a kindergartner at Franklin Primary Center, buy a therapy dog that may be able to predict when Emily will have a seizure.

The effort is being led by a handful of high school students who are members of The Future Is Mine club, which focuses on career education and community service.

The penny war started Jan. 4 and ends Feb. 12. Students are being encouraged to bring in not only pennies but any denomination of spare change or dollar bills, said Ryan Dunmire, a business education teacher at Steel Valley High School and sponsor for The Future Is Mine club.

The classroom in each school that raises the most money will win a pizza party March 5. But the real winner, Ms. Dunmire said, will be Emily if the district is able to raise enough money for her to get a dog.

Emily, of Munhall, was born 12 weeks premature with "a bleed on her brain," said her mother, Meghan Hyland. She suffers from cerebral palsy, lung disease and some other disorders and in December 2007, she started to have seizures, Mrs. Hyland said.

Since then, she has had about seven seizures. Sometimes they occur months apart. At other times, she has had them twice in one month. Each time she has a seizure, it takes her at least several days to recover, Mrs. Hyland said.

The majority of her seizures have occurred between 4 and 6 a.m. As a result, Emily sleeps in a small bed at the foot of her parents' bed so that they can hear her at all times. At the start of the seizure, Emily stops breathing and the Hylands must immediately administer medication to help halt the seizure.

"We lay there in hopes that we can sleep and listen to every noise that she makes," Mrs. Hyland said.

The family has estimated that it will cost about $14,000 to get a dog that will be specially trained to try to predict when seizures will occur. Mrs. Hyland said literature on the dogs suggests that they may be able to alert caretakers up to one or two hours before a seizure in part by recognizing electrolyte changes in the body.

For the Hyland family, that notification would be a godsend, Mrs. Hyland said.

"We would be able to sleep at night and to make sure that she is always in a safe place. Now, what if she is at school and near some stairs or in another situation where she could fall and get hurt? It's scary. There are things we have to worry about all of the time," Mrs. Hyland said.

Mrs. Hyland said the community has been extremely supportive of Emily and various fundraisers have been held to help raise money for the dog and Emily's other medical expenses. So far, about $7,000 has been raised.

"This is a tight-knit community where everybody does what they can for each other," Mrs. Hyland said.

For her part, Emily made sure she brought in a bag of pennies to donate to the effort.

"She said it was money for her doggie," Mrs. Hyland said.

For more, visit www.adogforemily.org.

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