City health officials have denied an appeal by a Newton, Massachusetts, woman who has been fighting to keep her miniature horse, Clover, in the yard of her home following complaints from some of her neighbors.Clover, the 28.5-inch, 165-pound mini horse, must be removed from Judy Hinchey's Auburndale property by Oct. 19, health officials said Monday, according to the Boston Globe.Hinchey now says she is considering suing the city. She told NBC10 Boston last month that she planned to use Clover as an emotional support animal to b...
City health officials have denied an appeal by a Newton, Massachusetts, woman who has been fighting to keep her miniature horse, Clover, in the yard of her home following complaints from some of her neighbors.
Clover, the 28.5-inch, 165-pound mini horse, must be removed from Judy Hinchey's Auburndale property by Oct. 19, health officials said Monday, according to the Boston Globe.
Hinchey now says she is considering suing the city. She told NBC10 Boston last month that she planned to use Clover as an emotional support animal to bring to schools, hospitals and nursing homes after getting the verbal green light from the city. But the mini horse caused a big dispute with some Newton neighbors.
Hinchey said she spent close to six figures between the cost of Clover, building a proper place for her to live and buying a new vehicle to transport her.
General guidelines from the state suggest at least 2 acres for one horse, but do not specify the size or type. The issue for Hinchey is a section of Newton’s health code that sets out regulations for “large animals.”
Judy Hinchey says Clover, her therapy animal, has sparked complaints from some neighbors, but that "most of the neighborhood loves seeing her."
Hinchey argued that Clover should not be treated the same as a full-size horse, the Globe reports -- a distinction that is not made in Newton but is made by several other localities in Massachusetts. She views it as ridiculous to treat Clover, who is about the size of a Great Dane, as a large animal.
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Public health director Lisa Heyer said in her ruling against Hinchey's appeal that the arguments were not convincing, according to the Globe.
“A miniature horse is a breed of horse and thus, based solely on the plain language of the regulations, constitutes a Large Animal,” Heyer said. “The regulation … does not include any exception or threshold based on the size of the horse. The fact that a horse may be small does not remove the animal from the category of ‘horse.’”
Hinchey told the Globe she assumed the city was revising its regulations when she didn’t hear back from them immediately after her Sep. 15 appeal, saying they were "poorly worded."
The city previously told NBC10 Boston the matter was "under advisement" and referred us to a City Hall meeting during which officials disclosed that Hinchey's application had been denied on Aug. 25.
City officials said at the time that the denial was based on manure storage requirements, and that the property could not meet a rule requiring manure storage to be kept at least 100 feet from lot lines and 50 feet from any dwelling. While city officials said some of the complaints had been about the smell of manure in the neighborhood, Hinchey said the manure is kept in a closed compost bin and picked up weekly.
In her ruling, Heyer suggested that the manure odor concerns were immaterial to the city’s decision, according to the Globe -- the issues with the property meant that “no site visit was necessary to evaluate either the application or this appeal.”
A city spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment from the Globe on Tuesday.