THIS will be a referendum-free column for the very good reason that as I write it I do not know the outcome, but you do.

Instead, I will tell you about a couple that I saw in a café last weekend. They were a blind woman and her black Labrador guide dog.

They caught my attention because the dog was vigorously wagging its tail. Guide dogs are usually such serious, responsible animals.

The couple were near the counter chatting with a woman who clearly knew both of them. As soon as everyone had exchanged greetings and expressed their delight at seeing each other – by word or wagging tail – the dog immediately concentrated on its work and became the sober guide dog so familiar in our society.

It was fascinating to watch how it worked, unobtrusively stepping between its owner and the counter and holding itself there so that she wouldn’t bump into the counter accidentally.

Then, having made her order, it led her away to the tables as she said: “Let’s find somewhere to sit” and without any obvious signal, made it clear that here was an empty table where they could sit, positioned her with her back to the wall on the more comfortable seats, tucked itself up and sat watchfully at her feet while the staff brought over her order.

Their partnership got me thinking. It was definitely a partnership, almost symbiotic in nature. The woman needed the dog to see; the dog needed the woman for food and shelter. There was mutual respect and liking and they had probably been together for some time because of the way they seemed to understand each other with the minimum of words.

It was a beautiful example of something we can see every day of the year and dismiss because we see it so often. It is one of the wonders of our society, along with that of the shepherd and his sheepdog, which we tend not to see so much because they are in the fields rather than our towns.

I cannot begin to guess how the dogs are trained to do their work. Labradors and border collies are highly intelligent, but they have to be taught to understand matters from a human point of view and to operate in a way that benefits humans, sometimes against their natural instincts.

Any dog that wasn’t a sheepdog would see sheep as Sunday lunch in a woollen sweater, and how on earth does a guide dog know which seat a human would prefer?

Since London 2012, we have been used to admire disabled athletes as they overcome their disability to perform extraordinary sporting feats. We marvelled again last weekend at the Invictus Games for disabled servicemen and women. They inspire our admiration, rather than our pity.

But what about non-athletic disabled people? This woman in the café was not a super-athlete; she was just an ordinary person like you and me, who happens to be blind and would never consider herself to be a courageous heroine. But just like the para-athletes, she would not want our pity either.

If she and others were not blind, then no one would have thought of creating guide dogs and our society would lack one of its wonders. Without her faithful black Labrador friend, the woman in the café’s chances of living a “normal” life would be considerably reduced. With him, she can wander into a café, just like you and me, and have a coffee and cake.

It doesn’t matter what disability a person has, whether they are an athlete or not. All it takes is ingenuity, sometimes some hard work, and they can live the kind of life that a non-disabled person has.

The woman in the café can see. She just doesn’t use her eyes to do so.