The Panda Project:

Guide Horses For The Blind.

Report 1

Panda in downtown Albany NY

I'd like to introduce my newest training project. Her name is Grosshill's
Panda Bear, and she's a tiny, 24 inch, nine month old miniature horse.
Up until the middle of August she was in the midst of a successful show
career. She is now in training with me to be a guide for one of my
clients, Ann Edie. Ann is blind and has been a guide dog user for nine years.

Ann and I have lamented many times the fact that our other horses are
too big to be guides. Certainly her Arabian, Magnat, shows great talent
for the work. In the past we've thought about using minis, but the only
ones we had ever seen were in the thirty inch range, too big to be
practical. So it was an idea we talked about, but never pursued.

Then last year two things happened that made us look more seriously at
the idea of using horses as guides. In October 2000, Ann's eleven year
old guide dog, Bailey, became ill and died very suddenly. At the same
time we began to hear reports of a mini that had been trained to be a
guide. Ann had actually heard rumors of this the year before and out of
curiosity had contacted the trainers, the Burlesons. At that point the
Burlesons were in the early stages of their project. They had trained
one of their pet minis to do guide work, and they were starting to train
another horse, Cuddles. They were hoping to place Cuddles with a blind
user at the end of her training. 

Ann was intrigued, but her guide dog was still in good health. We were
both fascinated by the training possibilities and what it would mean for
horses in general to have minis working as guides, but the need to
pursue it further was not there.

That changed after Bailey's death. After nine years of service, he left
a huge hole in Ann's life. She couldn't bear the thought of getting
another dog right away, but as time went on she missed having a guide.
We were hearing more and more reports about Cuddles and the successes
the Burlesons were having with her. Ann contacted them again. We both
had so many questions. It was hard to believe that a horse could
actually work as a guide. Could it truly be house broken and go to work
with you? Could it ride in cars and travel on buses? Could it fit into
all the tiny spaces a guide dog routinely was asked to negotiate? And
was it healthy for the horse to be used in this way? 

We had more questions than a phone call could answer, so in May we went
down to North Carolina to meet Cuddles and the Burlesons. We also met
Cuddles' new owner, Dan Shaw, who was in the final stages of his
training with her. He would be leaving with her within days to take her
home to Maine.

Over the weekend we went out on several training runs and watched them
working together. Cuddles and the Burlesons answered many of our
questions, but for every question that was answered, we discovered we
had ten others. Most of these questions were centered around issues of
management and health. How healthy was it for a horse to live and work
in heated buildings? Could a grazing animal adapt itself to the demands
of our work schedules? That would include being house broken. The
Burlesons had indeed house broken Cuddles. She traveled with us all day
with no accidents, but could she live overnight in a house like a dog?
Could she stay overnight in a motel? What special accommodations would
need to be made for her? And was it healthy for a horse to live like this?

We also had questions about mobility. At 55 pounds Cuddles was indeed
tiny, but could she fit into all the crowded human environments a dog is
routinely asked to go? Just how practical was it traveling with a mini?
What, if any, limitations would there be in terms of mobility and access?

It certainly appeared that the Burlesons had addressed all these health
and mobility concerns in their program, but it was still hard to imagine
living with a horse. I was having trouble scaling my thinking down from
the big horses to grasp just how flexible and adaptable a mini could be.

As I watched Cuddles, it was clear she could do the guide work. She
handled traffic, navigated Dan around obstacles, stood quietly by his
side during a long dinner in a restaurant, and correctly carried out all
his requests to find the car, find the door, follow the people, etc..
She could do all the tasks that would be asked of a canine guide, and
furthermore, she did them well. We were impressed by her training, but
we still left North Carolina with many questions.

As Ann and I discussed our trip over the following weeks, we both
decided that these were questions that needed answering. Ann had begun
the process of applying for a new guide dog, but at the same time she
was intrigued by what we had experienced in North Carolina. Horses live
so much longer than dogs. With modern health care, it is becoming
increasingly common to see horses living and working well into their
thirties. Ann had been lucky. Her guide dog had lived to be eleven, and
she had been able to keep him in work right up to the time of his death.
However, many guide dogs need to be retired after just a couple of years
of service. If horses could indeed work as guides, the payoff in terms
of a longer working life could be huge.

But the questions were still there, and the Burlesons did not have
another horse ready to go. They weren't planning on training another
guide until the following spring. Ann did not want to wait that long,
nor did she feel comfortable risking her mobility on such a new concept.
So, she went ahead and arranged to get a new dog. But in the meantime we
continued to explore the idea of horses as guides. We started looking
for potential candidates. The first challenge was finding a mini that
would be small enough. Don Burleson felt that the minis should be under
26 inches. There aren't that many minis that size, especially since we
were excluding dwarfs from consideration. We were concerned that horses
showing any signs of dwarfism might have hidden health risks.

Our search via the internet turned up only four possible candidates, one
in Oklahoma, one in Wisconsin, and two at Grosshill Miniature Horse
Farm, just outside Ocala Florida. One filly in particular at Grosshill
caught my eye, a beautifully proportioned, black and white pinto. She
was nine months old which meant she still had some growing to do, but
Jack Burchill, the owner of Grosshills, thought she would mature under
26 inches. She had two older siblings who had each stayed very small. It
was a risk buying a horse who had not yet reached her full height, but,
on the other hand, there were training advantages to starting with a
weanling. 

We flew down in the middle of August to meet her, and discovered she was
irresistible. Panda is an elegant, beautifully proportioned,
sweet-natured little charmer. Her manners were impeccable. She was calm,
easy to handle, exactly what we were looking for in a guide. As long as
she stayed tiny we would be all set. From my point of view she would be
a horse I would welcome into our training family. It was up to Ann to
decide if this was a project she really wanted to pursue. The answer was yes.

To read the rest of this report click here.

Copyright 2001 Alexandra Kurland

Revised April 2002