Emotional support pigs
By animal
The obstacle is almost never the landlord. It is the zoning code calling your pet livestock.
Check legality before anything else. A reasonable accommodation does not create a right to keep an animal the law prohibits, so where a state or city bans the species the housing question never arises. State lists change, and a city can be stricter than its state.
Zoning is the real problem
Most municipal codes classify pigs as livestock and prohibit keeping livestock in residential zones, without any exception for size or for the fact that the animal lives indoors. That prohibition is a law about keeping the animal, and a reasonable accommodation does not override it.
A growing number of cities have amended their codes to permit miniature pigs under a weight limit, sometimes with a permit. Whether yours has is the first question, and it is answered by the city rather than by your landlord.
The size problem
Teacup and micro pigs are a marketing category rather than a breed. A pig sold as staying under 30 pounds commonly reaches 100 or more, and a weight-limited municipal exemption then stops applying to an animal you already have. This is the most common way these situations fall apart, and it happens eighteen months in.
Where pigs are lawful
The accommodation analysis runs normally, and a provider has better-than-usual material for it: rooting damages flooring and skirting, pigs are strong, and in an upper-floor unit the practical objections are real rather than pretextual. A request that addresses damage and containment directly does considerably better than one that does not.
Where the animal is lawful, the species is something a clinician records rather than something that decides the outcome. The letter still rests on a licensed clinician concluding that you have a disability and that this animal alleviates a symptom of it.
Common questions
- My city allows mini pigs under a weight limit and mine has outgrown it.
- That is a zoning problem rather than a housing one, and an accommodation does not solve it. Some cities grandfather existing animals; it is worth asking before anyone complains.