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Girl Selling Lemonade To Help Soldiers Bring Home Rescued Dogs

CHICAGO (CBS) -- A 10-year-old girl from Crystal Lake has set up a lemonade stand to help raise money to bring soldiers' dogs home from overseas.

WBBM Newsradio's Mike Krauser reports Rahan Sivertsen has a soft spot for dogs and soldiers, so she came up with an idea to sell lemonade and watermelon to raise funds for the Puppy Rescue Mission, which assists in adoptions of stray dogs that soldiers have rescued from war zones.

"It's a group that raises money to help our soldiers bring home dogs they have found and loved while serving their country," Rahan said.

She said she loves American soldiers, and she knows the dogs have helped them. Rahan said she's very excited to pay it forward.

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Her mother, Kerry, fosters dogs for local shelters.

"I agree 100 percent that we've got an overpopulation issue here," she said. "In the same breath, we as a family believe that what our servicemen and women are doing over there, that this is a tiny gift that we could give them."

She said the dogs soldiers have rescued overseas are "very therapeutic" for them.

"For a soldier to leave them behind, it just touches us," she said. "They need to come home together."

For her 10th birthday recently, instead of gifts, Rahan collected for donations for the local animal shelter.

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