Friday, June 10, 2005

Mini Horses, Major Fun!

We have had above-normal rainfall this year and the ponies have been unable to keep up. The grass is now three-feet high and you can only see the tops of their backs when they are grazing. We are thinking of marking them with flags so we can find them:



You know, a lot of people believe that the idea of using horses as guides is a new idea, but the concept has been addressed in movies for many years, some dating-back over half a century:

Guide horses in movies

Janet has experienced great success at training ponies to live indoors for brief periods, even teaching them to sleep in beds:



If any of your read the award-winning cartoon strip Non Sequitur, you might notice that Danae has a miniature horse (a “pygmy Clydesdale”) companion named Lucy. We were thrilled when Wiley featured a Lucy as a guide horse in his cartoon strip.



Guide Horses in Non Sequitur

While we are in no-hurry to expand the Guide Horse Foundation beyond experimental status, we were thrilled to note that a guide horse user has declared that her horse is better than her dog, and she returned her dog to the Seeing Eye, preferring to use her horse:

Guide Horses leading the Blind

We are also happy to see increased interest in our training method and we have been invited to meet Dr. Jane Goodall later this year to demonstrate the Guide Horse concept.



Guide Horses are allowed to fly onside the passenger cabin of commercial airliners, and several of our ponies are now frequent flyers.



The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) allows people to fly with emotional support animals, prompting some people to consider emotional support horses:

Using emotional support horses

There is also an explosion of interest in having mini horses as surburban pets, and Janet has an exciting new book on the subject:

Miniature horses in the Neighborhood