ArcaMax

One day as my husband and I were walking through my town, I noticed a guy coming toward us walking his dog. I peered ahead and tried to figure out what breed the dog was. He didn't look like any dog I'd ever seen before. As they got closer, I realized he didn't even look like a dog. He actually looked like ...

A goat.

"Hey honey, is that a goat?" I asked my husband.

"Looks like a goat to me," he said.

"Is it a pet goat?" I wondered aloud.

"Looks like a pet goat to me," he said, and then waited a moment for the inevitable.

"I want a pet goat," I announced.

"Of course you do," he responded.

Now, where I live, people do not routinely walk goats down the street on a leash. Actually, where I live, people don't routinely have goats at all. Since this is the suburbs, people are not allowed to keep livestock as pets, even ones that are as well behaved as this one seemed to be. As the goat got closer, I could see he was wearing some kind of coat. It was a goat in a coat. What are the odds?

"Is that a coat on the goat?" I asked my husband.

"Looks like a coat on the goat to me," he responded.

"Why is the goat wearing a coat?" I asked.

"Maybe he's going out to eat and jackets are required," he said.

When the man with the goat in the coat on the leash got near us, we could see that the coat had some writing on it.

"What's the coat say?" I asked my husband.

He squinted. "Service Goat," he read.

I roared with laughter. Apparently the goat was not a pet. He was some kind of working goat. At this point, the guy with the goat was close enough for us to talk to him, so I waved to get his attention, but he kept on walking. I suddenly realized he couldn't see.

"Excuse me," I said, tapping him on the arm. "Can we ask you a question?"

"Sure," he said, smiling. I was pretty sure we were not the first people to stop and inquire about his goat in a coat.

"I see that your goat is a service goat. What does he do for you?"

"I'm legally blind," said the guy with the goat in the coat. "He's a guide goat."

"Why didn't you get a seeing eye dog?" I asked.

"I'm allergic to almost all dogs," he said. "No problem with goats."

"That makes sense," I said.

"Besides, there's an advantage to having a goat," explained the man with the goat in the coat. "There's one less chore for me to do."

"What's that?" I asked.

"I don't have to take out the garbage."

"Why not?" asked my husband.

The man with the goat in the coat shrugged. "The goat eats it."

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Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.

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