Service animals perform a wide variety of services and tasks for
             people with disabilities, and many disabled people would not be able to
             function effectively without their animals. Initially, service animals
             were trained to help lead their blind owners through everyday tasks, from
             walking to work to negotiating around their homes. Called "guide dogs,"
             many were trained by "Seeing Eye," Inc., and those dogs were known as
             "seeing-eye" dogs. Today, animals, not just dogs, provide a variety of
             services for the disabled and elderly. Guide dogs still help the blind,
             and service animals also are trained to help the deaf "hear," and aid
             wheelchair bound individuals by leading or pulling them, or helping them
             with balance and movement. They can also pick up and carry items, notify
             others if their owner is having a seizure, and even act as companions and
             therapy dogs for people with severe disorders such as autism. One expert
             writes, "Service dogs perform tasks such as operating light switches,
             retrieving items, pulling wheelchairs, and opening doors. Hearing dogs
             assist people who are deaf or hearing impaired by alerting them to sounds
             such as telephone rings, crying infants, alarms, and people calling them by
             name" (Henderson). Service animals are not pets, they are highly trained
             assistants who can make the difference between a disabled person living on
             their own or living in a group home or other assisted-living situation.
             Today, they are more than dogs. A variety of animals have been trained to
             assist the disabled, from miniature horses to pot-bellied pigs and beyond.
             The use of service animals is not a new idea. One researcher notes, "The
             use of animals to assist their ailing human counterparts dates to the early
             Greeks who gave horseback rides to raise the spirits of people who were
             incurably ill, and documentation from the seventeenth century makes medical
             reference to h...