The American Disabilities Act protects service animals, saying they can go anywhere their owners go. As Delta Flight 192 lifts off for Atlanta, a small chestnut horse lies stretched across the floor in a bulkhead row.
Her name is Cuddles, and she carries a heavy responsibility on her 2-foot-high shoulders.
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| Dan Shaw with his new guide horse, Cuddles |
Cuddles is a 55-pound
miniature, one of more than 120,000 registered in the United States. But the
words printed on a burgundy blanket fastened across her back reveal what makes
her unique: “Service Animal In Training. Do Not Touch.”
Janet Burleson, who has
trained 18-month-old Cuddles for the past seven months, says that she is the
first horse to go into full-time service as a guide animal–and the first
allowed to fly in the passenger cabin on Delta, perhaps on any airline.
Seated toe to horse in Row
20 are Burleson, her husband, Don, and Cuddles’ new owner, Dan Shaw. The
44-year-old Shaw, who owns a bait shop in Eastern Maine, has suffered from
retinitis pigmentosa since he was 17. It has left him with pinhole vision.
Shaw, Cuddles and the
Burlesons, who own a ranch 30 miles north of Raleigh, face a busy day in
Atlanta. They chose Atlanta because it is the closest city to Raleigh with a
rapid rail system.
Shaw, a graduate of the
CarrollSchool for the blind in Boston, often returns there to visit friends and
family. He uses the subway and wants Cuddles to experience a similar
environment. Besides riding on the subway, Cuddles will guide Shaw through the
vast airport terminals and lead him onto elevators, escalators and people movers.
As Shaw moves along a
concourse of Hartsfield International Airport,his left hand grasps the little
horse’s reins and metal harness. People turn to stare. Cuddles looks straight
ahead, sure-footed in the white leather baby shoes she wears for traction on
the slippery floor.
“Is that really a
seeing-eye horse?” asks Sandy Feenstra from Cleveland.
“I haven’t seen any of
those in Ohio. But hey, if it works, it works.”
The Burlesons are so
convinced that horses can be a reliable alternative to dogs for the visually
impaired that they have established the nonprofit Guide Horse Foundation http://www.guidehorse.org).
Its mission is to deliver
trained guide horses at no cost.They have more than 40 applicants on the
waiting list who have given various reasons for preferring a horse to a guide
dog: allergy to canines, fear of dogs, needing an animal with more stamina. One
woman says she walks four miles to work each day, and the trek makes her dog’s
paws bleed.
Shaw’s desire for a horse
is purely emotional.
“Horses live 35 to 40
years,” he says. “I’m an animal lover. To lose a dog after eight to 10 years,
and then have another to train, and have to do that three or four times in my
lifetime . . . that’s painful.”
Last March, as Shaw’s wife,
Ann, was filling out an application for his first guide dog, the television was
tuned to “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.” The show featured a segment on the
Burlesons and a miniature horse named Twinkie, who was being trained to lead a
blind woman. To Shaw, the timing was “divine providence.”
“I want one of them instead
of a guide dog,” he remembers telling Ann. “I don’t know what it will take, or
what it’s going to cost, but that’s the way I want to go.”
When Shaw located the
Burlesons, however, he was disappointed to learn they had no horse to offer.
They were still trying to raise money to buy some more miniatures, and then
they would have to spend eight to 10 months to train them.
To the Burlesons’ delight,
Patricia Cornwell, the crime novelist, donated $30,000 to their effort. In an
upcoming book, “Isle of Dogs,” Cornwell, who has visited the Burlesons’ ranch,
includes a blind character led by a guide horse.
The couple used the money
to purchase six miniature horses from a breeder in South Carolina. One of them,
Cuddles, soon was in training for Shaw. A second, Cricket, is destined for a
blind woman in Gig Harbor, Wash.
Earlier this month, horse
and master finally met in Raleigh, the closest city to the Burlesons’ ranch
with an airport. “They seemed to have made an instant connection,” Janet
Burleson says. “There was such joy in his face. He’s crying. Both of us are
crying. Sometimes when I was doing the [training], I’d get frustrated. But when
I saw the end result. . . .”
The Burlesons are proud of
Cuddles. She knows basic leading and responds to 23 voice commands, including
“wait” (not whoa) and “forward” (not giddyap). Just as important, she is
housebroken. “She will absolutely let you know when she needs to go,” Janet
Burleson says. “She’ll stand and stomp her foot and whinny. If she has to go
really bad, she will stomp her foot and cross her back legs. I’m not kidding.”
Michele Pouliot, director
of research and development for the San Rafael, Calif.-based Guide Dogs for the
Blind, Inc., has trained dogs for 26 years and owns two miniature horses.
Although she’s never considered training the horses to guide, she is keeping an
open mind: “Our take is, we don’t know what they are doing, so why criticize
it? Maybe it’s great.”
The Burlesons, who have
been invited this summer by two groups of guide dog users to demonstrate what
their horses can do, say they aren’t out to replace guide dogs. “We love dogs,”
Don Burleson explains. “We love dogs as guides. Our main thrust is . . . to
give blind people more options.”
Evelyn B. Hanggi, president
of the Equine Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, questions the suitability of
horses as guides because of their natural instinct to spook or bolt. “Cuddles
may turn out to be a great horse and never spook,” she says, “but sooner or
later it will happen . . . Imagine a guide horse spooking in a busy
intersection and either running off or barging into its owner.”
But Janet Burleson, a show
horse trainer for 30 years, has no fear. “I teach them to more or less spook in
place. They learn to accept the normal things of human life–loud noises,
vehicles, balloons popping, fireworks, dogs barking.”
The idea of Cuddles bolting
makes Shaw smile. The calm little horse that licked his nose when they met
suddenly going mad and dragging him off? Not a chance, he says. In May, Shaw
will return to the Burleson ranch for four more weeks of training with Cuddles.
Then he and the Burlesons will load the little horse into a rented Winnebago
for the long drive to her new home in Maine.
“I’ve always loved horses,”
Shaw says, tearing up. “I never expected to own one. I never expected it to be
my eyes, either.”
Source: Los Angeles Times (2001)
