Discover how helping dogs are trained to aid their handlers in leading independent, happy lives. True-life stories explain how a guide dog can lead a blind person safely across a car-filled street, a hearing dog alerts his deaf handler to her crying baby, and a service dog helps a person in a wheelchair prepare for bedtime.

Take an inside look at the training of police dogs and how they get their often dangerous jobs done.

Uncover the difficult training exercises and heroic real-life stories of search and rescue dogs, their handlers, and their brilliant teamwork. Among the amazingly true tales: a disaster search and rescue dog leaps from metal beam to concrete slab while trying to locate an earthquake victim trapped beneath the rubble of a fallen building; a group of children lost in the forest is saved by a wilderness search and rescue canine; and a snow slide buries a young mother, until an avalanche dog comes to her rescue.

Hunting and herding dogs come in all shapes and sizes. Some have a natural ability to do their work, but training with humans is also important. Learn about how a miniature dachshund forces a rabbit into the path of his hawk-hunting partner, and how the well-trained dogs of Deer Search, Inc. track wounded deer. Discover how a border collie gathers sheep into a pen, and what makes a scrappy Australian cattle dog go head-to-head with a thousand-pound bull in order to herd it.

Working dogs can be heroes--just like people. In Distinguished Dogs, learn how a Port Authority Police K-9 put his life on the line protecting the World Trade Center from bombs; military working canines save soldiers on the battlefield; sled dogs help stop a disease from spreading in Nome, Alaska; and Newfoundland dogs pull drowning victims from the water. Discover how handlers train these courageous canines and how the dogs put the lessons to work to save lives.