Pet hoarding — A form of animal abuse and cruelty

June 15, 2:43 AMPet Health ExaminerLorie Huston

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Animal hoarders often cannot recognize that pets are neglected and abused.

Animal hoarding is a horrible crime against animals. Often using the excuse of rescuing or sheltering homeless animals, pet hoarders neglect and abuse their pets and often seem incapable of recognizing the damage they are doing to their animals.

Animal hoarding defined

Animal hoarding is not a legitimate form of animal rescue or shelter and should not be confused with organizations whose purpose is to aid and serve animals. Animal hoarding serves only the hoarder's need to collect animals and does so at the expense of providing for the basic needs of the animals so collected.

Animal hoarding is also not characterized by caring for more dogs, cats or other pets than most people would consider. The eccentric "cat lady" who keeps eight or nine cats but feeds, waters and grooms all of them regularly while also taking care of their veterinary needs and environmental needs (such as litter box maintenance) is not by definition an animal hoarder.

An animal hoarder, by definition, is someone who:

• collects large numbers of animals.
• denies those animals basic care such as adequate food, water, shelter, veterinary care and sanitary conditions in which to live

Why people hoard pets

Animal hoarding has been associated with many different forms of mental illness, including OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), OCPD (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder), and dementia. According to the Hoarding Animals Research Consortium (HARC) Intervention Manual, a fairly large percentage of animals hoarders are eventually hospitalized with some sort of mental disorder and some even need to be placed under institutional protective care.

The HARC also maintains that while the largest percentage of animal hoarders are reclusive types of people who live alone, a significant number of animal hoarding complaints have also been associated with child abuse or elder abuse. Self-neglect is a commonly identified medical issue seen with pet hoarders as well.

What happens to hoarded animals

The most frequently hoarded type of animal is the cat, likely because hoarders find it easier to hide their cats from neighbors and other prying eyes who may recognize the abuse and neglect these animals are forced to endure. However, cats are far from being the only species which may be hoarded. Dogs, small rodents, reptiles, and many other species of animals have been found in hoarding situations. Even large animals such as horses are sometimes involved in hoarding cases.

In some cases of animal hoarding, upwards of 100 animals or more have been found living in the same home. Often, the home is ill-kept, with urine and feces found on the floor and other surfaces of the home. Food, when offered, is often simply scattered directly on the floor. However, often, the amount of food offered is inadequate to feed the number of pets kept, resulting in animals which are malnourished and even starving.

Pets housed in hoarding situations are often unhealthy and frequently infested with both internal and external parasites. These pets may suffer from any number of other infectious or metabolic diseases resulting from the unsanitary housing conditions and lack of adequate nutrition, among other factors.

In many hoarding cases, when the situation is finally discovered and health workers enter the home, dead bodies of pets are found, sometimes simply left to decay on the floor. Other pets in the household may be so desperate for food, that the dead bodies have been partially eaten. In these types of cases, it is not unusual for the air quality of the home to be so foul that health care workers and other persons entering the home are required to wear protective face masks while inside of the home.

Animal hoarding situations pose a problem for the humane societies and/or shelters which are forced to deal with them. Often, so many pets are taken out of the home that adequate housing is difficult to locate for all of them, stretching local shelters and humane societies to their limitations. Funding is often in short supply to deal with the health issues faced by the sheer numbers of animals involved as well. In addition, many of these animals may be beyond medical help, forcing rescue workers to have to euthanize large numbers of pets.

Excuses offered by animal hoarders

More often than not, the pet hoarder is unable to see and recognize that the animals in his/her care are being abused. These hoarders usually believe that they are performing a service to the animals in their care by taking them into their home. Animal hoarders often offer the excuse that any life is better than no life at all and frequently seem incapable of recognizing that the quality of an animal's life is an important factor also.

When directly confronted by animal control and/or public health officials regarding the physical and environmental conditions forced upon their pets, an animal hoarder often is incapable of perceiving that anything is wrong and these pet hoarders may be genuinely surprised and disturbed that they are being accused of animal neglect, cruelty and abuse.

Another quite disturbing fact about animal collectors is the fact these hoarders, when confronted and forced to relinquish their abused pets, are often guilty of beginning to hoard animals again within weeks to months of the previous seizure of animals. Efforts of intervention and prevention of recurrence of the hoarding are difficult and quite often unsuccessful.

Suffering from a wide variety of mental disorders, animal hoarders (or animal collectors) frequently house large numbers of animals and deny them basic needs, such as food and water. These people truly believe that their animals are better off living in this type of abusive situation and are incapable of understanding that they are committing a grievous offense. These same people, in some cases, may also be guilty of abusing their children or elders in a similar fashion and are also often a danger to themselves as well as to their pets and family members.