Guide Horse?

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

Donna Dochterman dokadaarabians@earthlink.net
RALEIGH, N.C.--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.
 
     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
 Carroll School 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."