Assistance dogs provide help and emotional comfort to people of all ages who are disabled in some way. Assistance dogs can enable a person to live independently who would not otherwise be able to. A Seeing Eye dog is a familiar type of assistance dog, but there are a variety of other ways that specially trained dogs serve people:

• alerting a deaf person to the phone ringing or someone at the door
• alerting a person prone to seizures of an impending episode
• retrieving objects for people with limited ability to move

Assistance dogs are driven by their natural desire to care for and please their human partners.