Article: Seeing-eye horse

Monday May 18, 2009

By BEN LEUBSDORF

Tiny horse is a guide for blind Muslim woman in America.

MONA Ramouni seems more nervous than Cali as they ride the rattling bus to work for the first time.

"You're a good girl, you're OK, you're OK," Ramouni says softly, stroking Cali – a three-year-old former show horse that stands about 0.75m, weighs about 55kg and has trained since November to become Ramouni's guide.

Horse power: Mona Ramouni riding a bus to work with her guide horse, Cali, in Lincoln Park, Michigan.

Ramouni lost her sight to an eye disease called retinopathy of prematurity shortly after birth. She relies on her family to guide her around the Detroit suburbs where she's lived, studied and worked for all of her 28 years.

She wants more independence, but a traditional guide dog isn't an option. Ramouni, an observant Sunni, respects her Jordanian-born parents' aversion to having a dog in the home where she lives along with three of her six siblings.

The answer, she hopes, is Cali, short for Mexicali Rose.

"I want a horse that will be a partner for the next 30 or so years. This is a really awesome little horse ... and what I really want is to be able to take her places and go places with her that neither of us ever would have been able to do without each other," Ramouni says.

There are only a handful of the miniature breed animals trained as guides for the blind in the United States. Cali's trainer, Dolores Arste, knows of five others.

"Taking on a horse as a guide is a huge commitment, same as a dog but with more physical needs," says Arste, 61. "It is not a novelty. It is a real working animal."

The horses can live into their 30s, more than twice as long as most dogs, Arste says.

Ramouni says she was a "typical horse-crazy little girl". She heard about guide horses as an adult and eventually connected with Arste, who earlier helped train a guide horse. A breeder offered Cali as a guide and the training began for both the horse and Ramouni.

Ramouni says having Cali as a guide opens up new opportunities, but the US government may soon tighten the definition of a guide animal under the Americans with Disabilities Act to exclude farm creatures such as horses. Regulatory language that would limit guide status to dogs and other common domestic animals was proposed last year, but was postponed along with other new federal rules when President Barack Obama took office in January.

The new regulations are under review and final decision will be issued later this year, according to the US Justice Department.

In the meantime, Ramouni, a graduate of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, says she hopes to pursue a doctorate in child psychology at the university's main campus in Ann Arbor.

The benefits go beyond the practical, she says. Before Cali, "I had basically given up. I mean, I had been to the point where I thought, 'I'm going to get nothing out of my life,' " Ramouni says.

"And having Cali showed me that I had forgotten about all the optimism I had as a kid. When I was a kid, I thought I could do anything. I thought everything was possible." – AP

This article was taken from: The Star Online: Lifestyle: Focus 18 May 2009