Animal hoarding

Animal hoarding is a mental illness recognized as a psychological condition. It is considered a variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder rather than deliberate cruelty towards animals. Animal hoarding involves keeping higher than usual numbers of animals as pets without having the ability to properly house or care for them, while at the same time denying this inability. Hoarders are deeply attached to their pets, and find it extremely difficult to let the pets go. They typically cannot comprehend that they are harming their pets by failing to provide them with proper care. Hoarders tend to believe that they provide the right amount of care for their pets. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals provides a "Hoarding Prevention Team", which works with hoarders to help them attain a manageable and healthy number of pets.^[1]

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Characteristics of a hoarder

An animal hoarder is distinguished from a person who keeps an unusually large number of pets, but who cares for them properly. A hoarder is distinguished from an animal breeder, who would have a large number of animals as a result of their business. According to one study, the distinguishing feature is that a hoarder "fails to provide the animals with adequate food, water, sanitation, and veterinary care, and … is in denial about this inability to provide adequate care."^[2] Along with other compulsive hoarding behaviours, it is linked in the DSM-IV to obsessive-compulsive disorder and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.^[3] Alternatively, animal hoarding could be related to addiction, dementia, or even focal delusion.^[2]

Dangers of hoarding animals

Main article: Health Issues in Animal Hoarding

The presence of so many animals is dangerous both for the animals and the hoarders. At the very least, because hoarders, by definition, fail to clean up after the animals, urine and feces accumulate. Feces are a vector for a number of diseases. Ammonia from the urine rises to unhealthy concentrations in the air. OSHA set the permissible exposure limit for ammonia at 50 parts per million; 300 is life-threatening.^[4] In a particularly noteworthy case, the ammonia concentration of the air in one hoarder's house (even after ventilation) was still 152 ppm. ^[2]

Animal hoarding is also a serious animal welfare issue, affecting up to 250,000 animals—mostly dogs and cats—in communities throughout the United States.^[1] Hoarders keep abnormally large numbers of animals for which they may not provide even the most basic care. The sometimes hundreds of dogs or cats kept by a single hoarder generally show signs of neglect such as severe malnutrition, untreated medical conditions including open sores, cancers, and advanced dental and eye diseases, and severe psychological distress. In 80 percent of the cases studied, authorities found either dead or severely ill animals in hoarders' homes.^[5] Animal hoarding is also a public health threat, as hoarding creates highly unsanitary conditions on the properties of hoarders.

Legal solutions

Many states have no legal definition for animal hoarding (though localities may have a limit of the number and types of pets), and many people are unaware of the severity of neglect in typical hoarding situations. Animals rescued from hoarders must often be cared for at the rescuer's expense, and the high cost of doing this can also act as a disincentive for prosecuting hoarding cases. These factors can make it a lengthy and challenging legal process to secure a verdict against an animal hoarder charged with animal cruelty.

In 2005, the Animal Legal Defense Fund won a significant legal victory in the Sanford, North Carolina case ALDF v. Woodley.^[6][7] A unique North Carolina state law allows any person or organization to sue an animal abuser.^[8] In April 2005, the judge in the case granted an injunction allowing ALDF and county authorities to remove more than 300 diseased, neglected and abused dogs from the home of a Sanford couple. ALDF was granted custody of the animals, and the hoarders were found guilty of animal cruelty charges. ALDF subsequently won the right to restrict the hoarders' visitation rights while the dogs remained in custody during ongoing appeals.^[6]

See also

• Crazy Cat Lady (character from the Simpsons)
• Teresa Nielsen Hayden (American writer)
• Toxoplasmosis
• Health Issues in Animal Hoarding

References