Guide Horse Users offer Feedback

With the Guide Horse experiment entering its fifth year, the Guide Horse Foundation has been carefully tracking the experiences on Guide Horse Users.  To date, Guide horses have shown exceptional intelligence, judgment and the ability to keep their handlers safe in challenging situations. 
Dan Shaw, our first Guide Horse user has been performing exceptionally well with Cuddles and Dan reports that Cuddles is only improving with use. 

Initial reports indicate that a Guide Horse can be cost-effective alternative to traditional guides and help fill the critical shortage of animal guides.  According to Lighthouse International, there are more than 1.3 million legally blind people in the USA, yet only 7,000 guide animal users.

There is also an issue of high expense.  According to the Guide Dog Users national advocacy group, training a guide dog can cost up to $60,000. With a longer useful life, Guide Horses promise another option for the visually disabled.

Dan and Cuddles will become the world's longest working guide team in 2015 when they enter their fifteenth year together, and they are expected to be able to work as a team for more than 30 years.

According to Dan Shaw: "Cuddles and I were at an outdoor fair and standing next to a large tent.  The wind picked up and Cuddles sensed that the tent was going to collapse, and she insisted that we move away to a safe distance.  Just seconds later a large tent beam crashed into the spot we were standing.  She saved me from serious injury that day."

Ann Edie, an independent Guide Horse user reports great success with her Guide horse: "My conclusion at this point in the process, however, is emphatically that Panda is a delightful companion and a fully competent and dependable working guide.  It is a joy to travel with her, and I can completely rely on our  effective communication and joint decisions to get us to our travel destinations safely and efficiently."

At this point in the experiment, the Guide Horse Foundation has been successful in developing a complete training program.  Now that Dan and Cuddles have been operational for three years, the Guide Horse Foundation is planning to move forward with two more teams in late 2003.