Service animal is, we must remember, a legal term with a specific definition.
A service animal can accompany you in places where animals ordinarily would not be able to.
Depending on your local laws, goats may not be recognized as service animals.
But if it is purely for your own use at home, they definitely can.
Let’s find out more.
Are goats good service animals?
Goats are good service animals for the right purposes.
There are a great many caveats to this that I will get into, but let’s first look at it in the broadest sense.
If you are just broadly looking for an animal that can support you emotionally, help you manage tough feelings or navigate difficult emotions, then goats can certainly be great for this.
It is often surprising to people just how affectionate goats can be, and how deeply they can bond with their owners.
Your goat will be a great friend for you, and will be happy to hang out with you when you need it.
However, there are naturally limitations to this.
Firstly and perhaps most obviously is that goats really cannot be reliably trained to perform any kind of specific service function in your life.
They can’t be trained as guide dogs or anything like that.
Furthermore, whereas many areas of life such as using public transport might allow service animals for emotional support or other purposes, they typically will not allow goats.
So, goats can be good service animals, but their uses are going to be very limited compared to other animals.
If you are okay with an animal which simply lives in your homestead and can be approached when you need for emotional support, then a goat makes a great service animal.
Otherwise, your needs probably are not going to be met by a goat and you should consider a different option.
Are goats legal service animals, then?
Are goats legal service animals?
In general, no, goats are not legal service animals.
Local laws can vary a lot on this question, so it’s always worth checking with your local ordinances to see whether or not you can legally use a goat as a service animal in certain contexts.
However, by and large, in the United States, goats are not a recognized service animal and thus not up for the same exceptions as things like guide dogs or emotional support dogs.
This is where the big limitations of goats as service animals lie.
Even if you could train a goat to guide a blind person or something of this sort, you mostly wouldn’t be able to make good use of it in public.
You might wonder why exactly this is, especially since there are many places which even accept miniature horses as emotional support or service animals.
Again, the reasons are not always the same and, for the most part, it’s not as though goats specifically are banned as service animals.
It’s rather that dogs are the only animals that are legally accepted as service animals.
Goats are certainly a lot harder to train, less predictable, and in some ways more capable of causing problems in public than dogs are.
Are they good, generally speaking, for emotional support?
Are goats good for emotional support?
Goats are good for emotional support for the right person, but again, not in a legal context.
Goats are not legally recognized as emotional support animals in the same way that other animals are, meaning you can’t take them into public places you otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
That said, again, if you are looking for an emotional support animal in the simple sense of an animal that can help you get through tough times simply by its presence in your home, then goats are great for this.
Realistically, then, goats are only good for emotional support in the most limited sense.
This isn’t to say that they aren’t great and uplifting companions to have around, but we now have quite a narrow legal definition of the term “emotional support animal”, which goats simply don’t fit.
Can you have a goat as an indoor pet?
You should not, and very often legally cannot, have goats as indoor pets.
They are not fit in any way to live indoors.
They are large animals that simply would not be practical to keep indoors.
Even with smaller breeds like the pygmy goat, they just aren’t suited to being indoors anyway.
They need a large pasture to roam, to find their own food, and just generally to have a wide area to range in.
This is another limitation of goats as emotional support animals.
If you’re looking for an animal that can be around you all the time, a goat is not the best option by any means.
It’s more than a little complicated, then.
From a strictly legal standpoint in terms of the way we define and agree upon what a service animal is, it’s less likely that you’ll be able to get a goat recognized in this way.
Many local laws are very specific about what can be a service animal, and it usually does not include goats.
If you want to just keep them at home, though, for emotional support, this is a great choice!