New Disability Regulations Now Include Mini Horses as Guide Animals
Mona Ramouni, who is blind, rides a bus to work with her guide horse in Lincoln Park, Mich. Growing up in Detroit, Ramouni could never get a dog because her devout Muslim family considered dogs unclean. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio/File)
(CNSNews.com) – Although the Justice Department has extended the deadline for America’s hotels to comply with regulations regarding handicap access to swimming pools, new Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines are already being applied at miniature golf courses, driving ranges, amusement parks, shooting ranges and saunas.
Among the provisions in the “Revised ADA Standards for Accessible Design,” which went into effect on March 15, is one requiring businesses to allow miniature horses on their premises as guide animals for the disabled. Another limits the height of slopes on miniature golf holes.
“The new standards, for the first time, include requirements for judicial facilities, detention and correctional facilities, and recreational facilities,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said during a conference in Baltimore on June 7.
“We expect the implementation of these accessibility standards to open up doors for full participation in both the responsibilities, such as jury duty, and the benefits, such as playing at city parks, of civic life for people with disabilities,” he said.
“Miniature horses were suggested by some commenters as viable alternatives to dogs for individuals with allergies, or for those whose religious beliefs preclude the use of dogs,” the rules state. Also mentioned as a reason to include the animals is the longer life span of miniature horses – providing approximately 25 years of service as opposed to seven years for dogs.
“Some individuals with disabilities have traveled by train and have flown commercially with their miniature horses,” the Justice Department notes.
“Similar to dogs, miniature horses can be trained through behavioral reinforcement to be ‘housebroken,’” it adds.
However, “Ponies and full-size horses are not covered.”
A business owner can deny admission to a miniature horse that is not housebroken, whose handler does not have sufficient control of the animal, or if the horse’s presence compromises “legitimate safety requirements.”
The miniature horse addition has come under the scrutiny of at least one member of Congress, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who offered an amendment that passed the House, banning funding to implement the provision. Chaffetz penned an editorial last month in opposition to the rule entitled, “Horses in the Dining Room?”
Animals Help People in Interesting Ways
You’ve seen police on horseback or drug-sniffing dogs. But those aren’t the only animals with jobs that help their cities. From the most adorable lawn-mowers ever to man’s best bedbug hunters, here are five ways animals are helping address nagging urban problems.
As Brush Clearers
Photo courtesy of Tambako the Jaguar/Flickr
In Seattle, there are two constants: hills and blackberry bushes, the latter of which spread quickly through gardens and green spaces. Combine the two and you’ve got a real headache for the city’s public works department. But there’s one animal that thrives on hills and thorny bushes: goats.
The city’s department of transportation hired 60 goats to clear a hill of brush that was deemed too dangerous for humans to navigate. Seattle City Light, the city’s electric power utility, and the Seattle Parks and Recreation department have also hired the goats for brush clearing. One goat owner who rents them out to the city told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “They suck down blackberry vines like it was spaghetti. I don’t understand it, [but] the thorns don’t bother them at all.”
As Bedbug Finders
Bedbugs are a nightmare to get rid of and they thrive in urban environments. But many cities are finding success employing dogs to search out the elusive pests. City housing authorities from Seattle, Milwaukee, and New York have purchased bedbug-sniffing dogs. Just as dogs can be trained to sniff out drugs and bombs, certain dogs can be trained to find bedbugs.
But these specialized canines come at a high price. In 2009, Milwaukee purchased Gracie, a 12-pound Jack Russell terrier, to go on bedbug-hunting missions throughout the city’s 5,300 units of public housing. Gracie cost the city $10,000, but one city official explained to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel why she’s worth the money:
The advantage is that the animal can pinpoint bedbugs without having to go through all the units in a building, or trying to treat a whole building with various methods like raising the temperature in a building to 120 degrees.
And to stay off this list, we’re guessing it’s worth the cost.
As Natural Pesticides
In Thousand Oaks, California, native Modesto ash trees were being held captive by whiteflies and aphids (“plant lice”). Fortunately for the city, ladybugs have big appetites for these calamitous critters.
Last month, the city’s public works department deployed 720,000 hungry ladybugs to keep the plant destroyers in check. The beetles, which can consume about 5,000 of the insects throughout their two-year lifespan, cost the city about $2,000 per year. Much cheaper than the hundreds of dollars per vial of pesticide, according to the Ventura County Star.
As Lawn Mowers
Vacant lots have become a major problem in struggling cities during and even before the recession, costing taxpayers big money in maintenance and clean-up fees.
In Cleveland, officials came up with a cost-effective alternative: a flock of sheep (along with one llama). “We found that we could reduce the cost of mowing up to 50 percent and, of course, there is significantly less environmental impact,” Laura DeYoung of Urban Shepherds told The Plain Dealer.
As Mosquito Killers
Austin rather famously stumbled across its unlikely non-human ally: bats.
When the Congress Avenue Bridge was constructed in 1980, its crevices proved particularly hospitable to bats. Some Austinites wanted to see them gone, but the city decided to let them be. Today, the bridge is home to about 1.5 million bats, making it the largest urban bat colony in the world.
This has provided Austin a number of benefits. On a typical night flight the colony can consume 10,000 to 20,000 pounds of insects, including agricultural pests and mosquitoes. The bats have also become a popular tourist attraction. It’s the 21st ranked tourist attraction in the city and it’s estimated that hundreds of thousands of people visit the site each year.