TURNER – A boy with a deadly peanut allergy will get a dog to help protect him, and has received enough money in donations to help another boy with more severe allergies get a specially trained dog.

Donations, including two totaling $15,000, started pouring into an account set up for 4-year-old Ethan Rines of Turner shortly after a Sun Journal story on his effort to raise money for an allergen-sniffing dog was printed last week.

A man from Bangor sent $10,000 and a woman from Farmington, $5,000.

As the money continued to come in, Ethan and his mother, Jessie Rines, decided they wanted to help someone else. Deciding who to help was easy.

One of the many smaller donations the Rines received came from 10-year-old Kyle Kopec of Freeport. Kyle is also deathly allergic to peanuts and has allergies so dangerous that his family has taken steps to protect him, including home-schooling, his mother, Paula Kay Kopec, said Wednesday.

When the Rineses contacted the Kopecs to share the news that they thought two dogs would be in order, Kyle was overwhelmed, his mother said.

“Kyle dropped to his knees and was crying,” she said. “We are blown away.”

Jessie Rines first met Paula Kay Kopec when she was helping with a fundraiser at radio station Positive 89.3, a Christian music station where Paula Kay Kopec works as manager. Over lunch, the mothers discovered they both had children with severe peanut allergies.

“People have been so generous that we want to help all the children we can,” Jessie Rines said.

The dogs the boys will get are from Angel Service dogs in Monument, Colo., and are trained as puppies for a particular allergy. It takes around 18 months to train a dog and it is hoped the two boys’ dogs will be trained at the same time.

Each dog costs about $10,000, and a family receiving a dog must go to Colorado and be trained with the dog for two weeks, bringing the cost closer to $15,000.

Ethan, a budding bluegrass musician, will be a featured performer at a bluegrass fundraiser set for April 25. Response to the fundraiser has been so large it has been been moved from the Turner Grange to the Boofy Quimby Memorial Hall on Route 219 in Turner. Doors will open at 6 p.m. and the bluegrass music will begin at 7p.m.

Diamonds and Rust Bluegrass Band will be featured along with the Nitpickers, Hemingway Brothers and Wilf Clark and Dottie Farrell from the Misty Mountaineers.

Contact person for donations for the Labor Day weekend auction or financial donations is Dian Mooar at 597-2123 or e-mail: [email protected]. A special account in Ethan’s name has been set up at the Androscoggin Bank in Turner.

Regional Editor Scott Thistle contributed to this report.

More information on allergen-sniffing service dogs can be found online at: www.angelservicedogs.com.