Tonto, a miniature horse, helps a sight-impaired woman through a supermarket
Little horses have been trotting the earth for millions of years. One of the oldest known ancestors of the modern horse, known as the dawn horse, stood between 1 ft. and 2 ft. (30 cm and 60 cm) high at the shoulder. Miniequines were buried with Egyptian pharaohs, and in the Middle Ages they were must-have pets. In the 1800s, miniature horses were imported to work in low-ceilinged American coal mines as pit ponies. They've since started to serve as alternatives to seeing-eye dogs, and today the American Miniature Horse Association boasts a registry of 185,000 — all capped at 34 in. (86 cm) in height. As with full-size horses, they can get prohibitively expensive: the cheapest cost around $1,000.