[nagdu] Article about Guide Horses

[Lisa]

Hi everyone,

There's an article about guide horses in the US that I found on the NFB
website a few months ago. I copied the article here, the link to the website
is below. I found it pretty interesting, especially the paragraph about how 
limited your travelling options are when you're the owner of a guide horse.


The Guide Horse Foundation: Joke or Jeopardy?
by Eugenia Firth

>From the Editor: If you read newspapers, watch television, or use email, you
have probably heard something recently about the Guide Horse Foundation and
its plans to train miniature horses as guides for blind people. I frankly
laughed the first time I read one of these articles. Then I read another
piece describing a blind man in Maine who preferred to make a spectacle of
himself bumping into things and people rather than admit that he was blind.
He expects all this to change as soon as he is given a guide horse. He
believes that he will no longer mind going places once he has his trusty
little horse to show him the way.

     He is not alone, of course, in hoping that something outside himself
will accomplish the hard work of coming to terms with vision loss. We who
have walked this path know that disappointment and disillusionment lie ahead
of this man and every blind person who hopes to short-circuit the
adjustment-to-blindness process.

     Now the leaders of the National Association of Guide Dog Users, our
guide dog division, have discovered how much more disturbing and even
dangerous the guide horse plan is than we had first thought. Eugenia Firth
is the Association's Secretary. In the following article she describes what
she and NAGDU President Suzanne Whalen have discovered about the Guide Horse
Foundation. This is what she says:

     Within the past year I have become aware of an organization called the
Guide Horse Foundation, located in Kitrell, North Carolina. It is the
brainchild of Don and Janet Burleson. Mr. and Mrs. Burleson propose to train
miniature horses to serve as guides for the blind. Indeed the organization
has already advertised that it plans to serve two students, Cheryl King of
Washington state and Dan Shaw of Elsworth, Maine. Mrs. Burleson is a retired
horse trainer, and Mr. Burleson designs Web sites.

     As far as I have been able to determine from my reading of several news
stories about them, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Burleson has any knowledge of blind
people and our needs. Furthermore Mrs. Burleson knows nothing about training
guide animals for the blind. Suzanne Whalen, the president of the National
Association of Guide Dog Users (NAGDU), discovered this in an extensive
telephone interview with Mrs. Burleson. This interview demonstrated that the
Burlesons have made no real effort to learn proper training methods for
guides as they have evolved during the past seventy-two years, first by The
Seeing Eye and then by other guide dog schools. Also in her conversation
Suzanne discovered many disadvantages of miniature horses as guides,
disadvantages which my reading on the subject has corroborated.

     I first became interested in the Guide Horse Foundation through our
division listserv, in which interested contributors discuss issues affecting
guide dogs and their owners. When I first heard about miniature horses as
guides, I had the same reaction as many other blind people: I laughed the
concept off as a joke. However, I began to hear more about this idea, so I
decided to start researching the topic for myself.

     The chief problems with the Guide Horse Foundation spring from the fact
that, even if the horses can learn guide work, they are inflexible and
ill-adapted to dealing with changing situations. By Mrs. Burleson's own
admissions Guide Horse Foundation personnel know nothing about training
guides for the blind and have made very little effort to ensure that the
horses will be safe guides before accepting applicants. In addition, they do
not adhere to the procedures normally followed in the guide dog industry to
ensure that blind people receive the best matches possible.

     Mrs. Burleson told Suzanne that guide horses are not meant to replace
guide dogs but only to offer another choice to blind horse lovers. She went
on to say that the Guide Horse Foundation is experimenting at this stage to
see whether miniature horses can work as safe, effective guides. I wonder if
Mr. Shaw and Ms. King realize that they are the subjects of an experiment?
Are they prepared to risk their lives for an uncertain outcome? What
compelling reason could any blind person have for risking life and limb to
obtain questionable mobility in these days when the methodologies for
teaching cane travel and guide dog travel are well established?

     The only blind people the Guide Horse Foundation proposes to serve who
might become that desperate are blind wheelchair users. Mrs. Burleson has
chosen Nevada, one of her larger guide horses, to be the first guide horse
to pull a wheelchair while guiding a blind person. Southeastern Guide Dogs,
Inc., the only guide dog school currently teaching wheelchair guiding, has
refined its program over the past several years. However, they started, like
every other guide dog school, working with walking blind people. Mrs.
Burleson, on the other hand, hasn't yet proven guide horses either safe or
effective guides for walking blind people, much less for those who use
wheelchairs.

     Last, but certainly not least, the media have presented blind people in
a poor light when describing the services of the Foundation. Although an
organization cannot control what the news media finally choose to say, its
attitude as expressed to the reporter does convey its philosophy and its
view of the people it serves. An organization with a positive philosophy of
blindness would try, whenever interviewed by the media, to present a
positive attitude about blind people and their abilities. This, as far as I
can see, has not been the case with the Guide Horse Foundation. The news
media have focused solely on the cuteness of the horses--in one story a
blind woman paraded back and forth across a street with a miniature horse
decked out in children's tennis shoes. Only once, and this was a story
televised by the Discovery Channel, have I heard a reporter mention the
problems. He said: "There's a whole stable full of problems." I wonder if
this man realized just how right he was and what an unbelievable
understatement he had made. The first guide dog school, The Seeing Eye, did
not seek media attention until Morris Frank, the first person to use a
Seeing Eye dog, had proven to himself and to his instructors that guide dogs
were safe, effective mobility aids. Yet Guide Horse Foundation
representatives, even though they claim their program is experimental, have
been featured on "Good Morning America," CNN, Fox News, and in the
Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, People magazine, and the
Atlanta Journal Constitution, to name only a few.

     The leaders of the National Association of Guide Dog Users believe that
our community is facing a very real threat which will require collective
action of the sort for which the NFB is famous. No existing legislation that
I know of provides protection from irresponsible guide-animal training. Pigs
are supposed to be smarter than dogs. One day soon we may find pot-bellied
pigs being ballyhooed as ideal guides--the Philadelphia Inquirer recently
carried a story about two women who talked their way onto a US Airways
flight with a 300-pound so-called therapy pig. Unless we draw the line and
insist on common sense, the variety of ill-conceived notions and poorly
trained animals imposed on blind people will be limited only by the
imagination and creativity of well-meaning enthusiasts.

     Let us examine our immediate threat more closely. Unlike guide dogs and
of course canes, guide horses limit their owners to rural areas and the
suburbs. True, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Mr. Shaw plans
to bring Cuddles, his guide horse, to Atlanta and ride the Metro during his
training. However, whether he likes it or not, if he wants to keep a guide
horse, he will need to return fairly soon to a rural area so that Cuddles
can graze and run around outside. Guide horses can live for thirty years,
which is one of their advantages as guides; but, according to Mrs. Burleson,
the owner must stay in the rural environment during that time to benefit
from that long life span.

     Suzanne discovered some other disturbing limitations to miniature
horses. If you have a guide horse, forget about riding in taxis, Greyhound
buses, or any other vehicle that requires your guide to curl up; horses
cannot curl up. While they can, according to Mrs. Burleson, be taught to lie
under tables, they prefer to stand. Even if they do lie down, they must
spread themselves out. The complications arising from this fact are obvious
to any experienced, independent blind traveler. However, inexperienced
travelers, such as the newly blind and those happy to remain dependent upon
sighted friends and family members who drive roomier vehicles, may be
persuaded that thirty years of guide service is precious enough to sacrifice
all possibility of independence. What we are talking about, however, is
thirty years of prison-the prison of dependency and limitation.

     Mrs. Burleson mentioned to Suzanne some additional limitations. For
example, guide horses cannot hold their waste products as long as guide dogs
can. According to the Guide Horse Foundation Web site, excursions longer
than five hours are not recommended without precautions, presumably those
diapers the police horses wear. Guide dogs are somewhat flexible in this
department. Responsible guide dog owners can tailor relief schedules to
their own work schedules. However, if you have a guide horse, your horse's
schedule will determine yours.

     At first, when Suzanne questioned Mrs. Burleson about graduates being
required to remain in a rural or suburban setting in order to benefit from a
guide horse, her first response was to say that of course blind people
wouldn't move. Suzanne pointed out that blind people, like everybody else,
refuse to stay where they are put. Mrs. Burleson's response was that, if the
blind person had to move to a city, he or she could just give up the guide
horse. There goes the longevity advantage. Unless you plan never to accept
urban job offers, never to marry Mr. or Ms. Right and move to the big city,
never to accept that wonderful scholarship you were just offered, you can't
count on the advertised advantage of a thirty-year guide horse.

     Mrs. Burleson has also failed to consider the emotional pain of giving
up a horse. In fact, I fear that some people who have come to love their
guide horses will refuse to give them up, instead subjecting the animals to
a living situation for which they are unsuited. If that happens, even one
problem guide horse could cause access problems for guide dog owners.

     During the telephone interview Suzanne asked Mrs. Burleson to clarify
what she planned to teach guide horses. She could not do this clearly. The
Foundation's Web site gives a very good description of this process, but
Mrs. Burleson, the trainer, was unable to outline her curriculum. At one
point the subject of assessment came up. The Guide Horse Foundation plans to
bring Mr. Shaw to the school for a week of assessment, yet Mrs. Burleson
could not tell Suzanne what they planned to assess or how they were going to
accomplish it. An established guide dog school can tell you what skills a
blind person must possess to work successfully with a guide dog, and they
can explain how they evaluate a person's performance with a guide dog. Mrs.
Burleson had no idea what she was going to do with Mr. Shaw. Suzanne was
speaking to her toward the end of January, and Shaw is scheduled to arrive
some time in March. As a guide dog user with thirty-one years of experience,
I would be unwilling to work with a guide dog instructor who exhibited so
little knowledge of methodology or techniques.

     Suzanne and Mrs. Burleson discussed established procedures in guide dog
schools for choosing which dog a person is to receive. Cuddles, one of the
horses, has already been chosen for Mr. Shaw, even though Mrs. Burleson has
never evaluated him or formed a clear idea of what she is looking for in a
solid working team. In a guide dog school an instructor takes the student on
a walk to determine speed, pull, and the student's balance while walking.
Based on conversations with the student and other assessments, the
instructor matches the personality of the guide dog with the personality of
the person.

     No responsible guide dog school would choose a dog or make a definite
match with as little information as Mrs. Burleson has used to choose Cuddles
for Mr. Shaw. When Suzanne pointed out this problem, Mrs. Burleson admitted
that she knew nothing about how guide dog schools pick dogs for blind people
even though this process is one of the most critical aspects of training. In
fact, Mrs. Burleson said that Cuddles would work for anyone but that, if
this relationship didn't work out, she had nine other horses from which to
pick.

     All of this adds up to one thing: trouble for any blind person unwise
or unfortunate enough to choose this method of mobility. We in the
Federation could just sit back and let this school fail naturally, which is
likely to happen eventually. However, before the school fails, blind people
will be at risk, and they will make exhibitions of themselves with
ridiculous-looking guides wearing tennis shoes. These are not the booties we
guide dog users sometimes use for our dogs' protection against hot concrete
or snowy sidewalks; these are cutdown children's tennis shoes on the feet of
tiny horses.

     In addition, because of the relief problems, guide dog users may well
face increased discrimination in restaurants, apartment buildings, and other
public accommodations. The Board of the National Association of Guide Dog
Users has voted to bring a resolution opposing the Guide Horse Foundation
and its activities to our convention this summer for consideration. My
fellow Federationists, we need the support of every cane and guide dog user.
All of us have an interest in blind people being presented in a positive
way. We guide dog users must protect our rights or risk losing them.

Source:
https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm01/bm0104/bm010404.htm