[AG-EQ] Tommy

[Jewel]

I have written to Sarah, the assistant editor for MNN on a couple of occasions, and she has replied, giving me the information that I had asked for, and I am going to write to her again suggesting that if that article should be updated, in the para where it says what horses have been used for that guiding the blind be added.
Of course, the blind in one eye and can't see out of the other, guidedog handlers pooh-pooh the idea, but it is a proven fact that it, the miniature horse, can be  a very very good guide animal, plus it  can have panniers as part of its body harness  so it can carry the handler's and, incidentally,  its own lunch, and all manner of sundry articles;  plus plus, it lives to about twice the age of a regular dog guide! 
Guide horses have stood beside the table when their handlers have dined in fashionable restaurants, they have flown in aircraft etc etc all without a backward glance, if the handler's living conditions make it necessary, the guidehorse can be trained to live in the house.
It can do anything that the dog does: well!  almost anything:  it might find barking a bit of a challenge, but it could be trained to, for instance,  alert its handler to the fact that someone is at the door, or is where they shouldn't b, say prowling around the property, and it could tell its handler which was wich by employing different signals.
As stated on the MNN site, horses are VERY  VERY  intelligent and my Tommy, a crossbred Shetland/Timor pony  that used to pull Sailor's Waggin':  not a typo:   that was pulled by Sailor, my Newfoundland dog, before age caught up on him, was a prime example.
Just one example from among many that I could give;  When I was in the wagon:  renamed Tommy's Tucker Truck:   with his   reins in my hand, I, of course, had little:  make that" no" idea of, exactly where he was.  Well! I knew that he was still between the shafts but that was the extent of my knowledge and we were going around to pick up a waggonload of returned bread that would be fed to my pigs, the journey involved going along several streets and around corners.
There would be work for my guidedog to do later on, so its lead would be clipped to the back of the wagon and it would run along behind until its services were required.
I don't know where or how he had acquired a very good grasp of New Zealand's "KEEP  LEFT" road rule,[he could have given a useful lesson to many human road users!] but Tommy would trot along, keeping to that side  of the road, and when a car was approaching or overtaking, I could feel him move further to the left to give it plenty of passing room. 
When he came to the corner where there would often be humungous trucks waiting to turn into the road that he was just leaving, he would slow down from his trot to a walk, was he checking to see if there was anything coming?  I wouldn't be, at all, surprised if that was, exactly, what he was doing;  then, having been satisfied that all was clear, pick his way, carefully, past the idling truck, then resume his trot, go around another corner: for the few metres distance to the final one, he ignored the road rule of "KEEP  LEFT!!!" and go up the entranceway to the warehouse.
Once the wagon had been loaded, it was then the guidedog that took over, and, with his reins in my hand, Tommy would follow, at dog pace, and, after I had dropped in to have a coffee and a chat with a friend, with me back in the cart, we would return home.