Hudson Falls Man with Parkinson’s Gets to Keep His Goat
Greg Cutler of Hudson Falls is living with Parkinson's disease. It's a disease that gets worse as time goes by, with a cure unknown. Not much makes the every day easier, but it turns out that one thing truly has made a difference for him; his service pet goat.
The pygmy goats name is Cocoa Rose and is used as emotional support. The animal has made life much more enjoyable when dealing with multiple symptoms of Parkinson's disease, which include but are not limited to the following according to the Parkinson's Disease Foundations website:
- tremor of the hands, arms, legs, jaw and face
- bradykinesia or slowness of movement
- rigidity or stiffness of the limbs and trunk
- postural instability or impaired balance and coordination
So what's this funny business over being able to "keep" the goat?! It turns out, if you can believe this, some people within the village Cutler lives in within Hudson Falls had a problem with the therapy goat. They considered it "livestock" rather than a service pet, which is legally off-limits in the village.
That, I'll admit, seems ridiculous. Trying to take away a mans sanity is really what it would be. What's even crazier is to know that on Monday, it took an hour of deliberation at the Zoning Board of Appeals vote and to top it off, while it was granted a waiver, someone actually voted it down. I can't event imagine.
If you know of someone that suffers with Parkinson's disease, as I do, it makes the simplest tasks in life so difficult. I can only imagine the reasoning someone would vote against this man having his service goat is simply because they haven't put themselves in his shoes.