Programs that provide and train recipients in the use of service dogs who have been taught to pick up dropped items, carry backpacks for books and other valuables, operate light switches, push elevator buttons, ring doorbells, open and close doors, pull wheelchairs up hills or over curbs and provide other types of personal assistance for people with physical disabilities who have limited mobility. Some mobility assistance dogs serve as "walker dogs" who steady Parkinson’s patients and people recovering from an injury while walking. If the individual falls, the dog may also be trained to act as a brace to help the person regain their feet.

Programs that provide and train recipients in the use of dogs who have been taught to work with and respond to individuals disabled by mental illness. The dogs may remind the individual to take medication at a specific time; turn on lights and search a room for intruders; warm the person's body during a panic attack; interrupt checking and other repetitive behaviors; stay with the person during acute emotional stress; alert to mania, panic attacks or dissociative episodes; interrupt dissociative episodes or flashbacks; assist the individual in distinguishing "reality" from auditory or visual hallucinations; provide a constant grounding presence; and serve as a trustworthy companion when the person is negotiating paranoia.

Programs that provide and train recipients in the use of animals who have been taught to alert individuals who have epilepsy when a seizure is about to occur and/or to respond to a seizure when one is in progress. The dogs carry required medications in their packs, brace their owners during a fall, retrieve the phone, and can activate an emergency call-button if necessary. They also know how to try to revive their owners by licking their faces and gently pawing their forearms, and when and how to leave and get help.

Programs that help veterans with PTSD, inmates serving a sentence in prison, emotionally disturbed individuals or people who are isolated improve their personal and social functioning by giving them an opportunity to take responsibility for and/or relate to a domestic animal. In some cases, the animals may be selected due to comparable histories of trauma. Also included are programs that bring dogs or other small pets to visit people residing in a nursing facility or another institutional setting who are ill or elderly or have disabilities; and those that employ Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D.) who volunteer with their owner/handler as a team, going to schools, libraries and many other settings as reading companions for children. A similar program offers children the opportunity to learn to read by reading to one of its therapy horses.

A recurrent paroxysmal disorder of cerebral function that is characterized by sudden, brief interruptions in or complete loss of consciousness, motor activity and/or sensory phenomena. The seizures are caused by disruptions in the electrical and physiochemical activity of the brain.

A disorder affecting individuals who have experienced a psychologically traumatizing event which is characterized by reexperiencing the event through recurrent and intrusive recollections or dreams of the event, or the sudden feeling that the event was recurring; numbing of responsiveness or reduced involvement with the external world beginning sometime after the trauma; and/or one or a combination of other symptoms including hyperalertness or exaggerated startle response, sleep disturbance, guilt about surviving if others have not, memory or concentration impairment, avoidance of memories that recall the trauma and intensification of symptoms when exposed to events that symbolize or resemble the trauma.

The natural or adoptive mothers and fathers of individuals who have physical, sensory, developmental, cognitive, mental or emotional limitations, whose own patterns of personal, social and familial coping have been significantly affected by their responsibility for and concern about the person.

Individuals who have physical, sensory, developmental, cognitive, mental or emotional limitations, illnesses or injuries that affect their ability to engage in one or more major life activities. Disabilities and health conditions may be temporary or permanent, may be present at birth or occur at any point in a person's lifetime, and can be of different levels of severity.