Animal Hoarding
A Psychological Problem
and a Form of Animal Abuse
From time to time in most areas of the United States and beyond, there is a news story about a police raid on a residence that is overwhelmed with pet animals. Police find and remove fifty, one hundred or even more pets. Certainly too many for the owner or owners to care for at one time. This phenomenon is described as pet hoarding and there is quite a literature on the internet about this social and psychological problem. Here are some representative web pages and articles on the internet that focus on this issue.
Animal Hoarding
http://www.wisconsinhrs.org/Articles/hoarding.html
Hoarders are often people with good intentions and love animals. They also can't say "no" to yet another animal they think needs to be rescued. Hoarders often have mistaken beliefs about the care and fate of animals in shelters; they see themselves as the only person who cares. Afterward, the hoarder finds excuses not to adopt the animal out to a good home, and so the animal stays.
Eventually, there are too many animals for the hoarder to care for. Animals fall ill and don't receive medical treatment; waste is not removed; and the animal's health is at risk, exactly the situation the hoarder thought she was preventing!
Animal hoarding: Local horse abuse case points to little-known issue. Hundreds of cases reported each year, but problem is hard to track, much less combat http://www.bend.com/
Whatever motives or reasons that might come to light driven by good intentions or profit, simply overwhelmed, uncaring or in denial the case of a Brothers couple and the seizure of their 128 starved or neglected horses has put the local spotlight on animal hoarding, a poorly understood phenomenon that has become its own field of study in recent years.
Animal hoarding, sometimes known as collecting, has obvious, serious consequences, for both animal and human health and welfare. It transcends simply owning or caring for more than the typical number of pets, and is not about legitimate sheltering or rescue, according to the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium at the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton, Mass. http://www.tufts.edu/vet/cfa/hoarding/index.html
Animal Hoarders
A group of links on this page to sources on the topic of animal hoarding
Hoarding Fact Sheet
This Fact Sheet is Published through the Courtesy of the
Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, Older Adults Services Division.
Hoarding is the excessive collection and retention of things or animals until they interfere with day-to-day functions such as home, health, family, work and social life. Severe hoarding causes safety and health hazards.
The collection of newspapers, magazines, old clothes and other items may cause fires while animal hoarding can spread contagious diseases. It is estimated that older adults represent a significant number of people who hoard.
1. Understanding and Treating Hoarding
"Hoarding worries and behaviors can begin in childhood, even as young as age five. TREATMENT Combining psychotherapy, exposure therapy, and medication can ..."
www.anxietyandstress.com/sys-tmpl/hoarding/
2. OCF's Hoarding Web Site: Problems In Treating Compulsive Hoarding
"In addition, medication compliance is often a problem for people with compulsive hoarding. Because their days are commonly very unstructured, ..."
www.ocfoundation.org/1005/m120a_001.htm
3. OC Foundation :: Hoarding Website
"Thus, compulsive hoarding is a clear predictor of poor response to standard anti-obsessional medications. Despite this fact, no prior medication treatment ..."
www.ocfoundation.org/hoarding/treatment/neurobiology-and-medication-treatment-of-compulsive-hoarding.php
4. Hoarding or keeping objects that others would consider of no value ...
"Hoarding as a specific form of OCD does not seem to respond well to medication. One reason for this poor response may be that the medication works primarily ..."
home.att.net/~j-claiborn-phd/HOARDING.HTML
5. Claim Baxter detainees hoarding medication. 1 February 2006. Port News
"The Greens say detainees in the Baxter detention centre in South Australia claim to be hoarding medication, which is then being used as a bargaining item ..."
www.abc.net.au/news/australia/sa/port/200602/s1559375.htm
6. ScienceDaily: SRI Medication Effective In Treating Compulsive ...
"SRI Medication Effective In Treating Compulsive Hoarding Patients. In a paper published on-line in advance of publication in the Journal of Psychiatric ..."
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061024214706.htm
7. SRI Medication Effective In Treating Compulsive Hoarding Patients
"In a paper published on-line in advance of publication in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, Sanjaya Saxena, M."
www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=55030
Loving animals to death
Animal hoarders think they're helping their furry friends, but mostly they're just feeding their own twisted psyches.
By Chris Colin Salon
http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2002/03/08/hoarders/
"For years it's been perceived as an animal welfare issue, and left for the shelters to handle by themselves," Patronek says. "The human [side of the problem] has been largely ignored."
Patronek and his group, the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium (HARC), coined the phrase " animal hoarding" in 1997. It was a watershed moment: There had always been cat ladies, and newspaper stories about them began to appear routinely a decade ago, but they were referred to, rather benignly, as collectors.
"That connoted nothing," says Patronek, who, as a veterinarian, has walked into homes putrid with rotting carcasses and urine-soaked floors. He says the behavior "is much more like the pathological hoarding of objects."
Animal Protection Voters
Support Laws to Stop Companion Animal Hoarding
http://www.apvnm.org/2003legistation/animal_hoarding/
ANIMAL HOARDING:
A public health problem veterinarians can take a lead
role in solving Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association News
http://www.avma.org/onlnews/javma/oct02/021015a.asp
Experts estimate that there at least 700 new cases of animal hoarding, sometimes called collecting, every year in the United States. It is not well understood what causes individuals to hoard animals, but the tragic consequences for the animals and humans involved are preventable, said Dr. Gary Patronek, director of the Tufts University Center for Animals and Public Policy and the founder of the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium.
<snip>
Experts estimate that there at least 700 new cases of animal
hoarding, sometimes called collecting, every year in the United States. It is not well understood what causes individuals to hoard animals, but the tragic consequences for the animals and humans involved are preventable, said Dr. Gary Patronek, director of the Tufts University Center for Animals and Public Policy and the founder of the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium.
Animals in bondage: the hoarding mind, ANIMAL PEOPLE
http://www.animalpeoplenews.org/99/1/hoarders.html
The Hoarding of Animals
A Rising Problem in Society
Victimizing Animals
By: Lois Myers
http://www.critterhaven.org/hoarding_animals.htm
When Helping is Hoarding
<http://www.bestfriends.org/features/ hoarding-0503/hoarding.htm>
Animal Hoarders
http://www.anapsid.org/societies/hoarders/
[A collection of links on the subject]
HOUSE BILL 444
45th legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO
second session, 2002
INTRODUCED BY Joseph M. Thompson
http://legis.state.nm.us/Sessions/02%20Regular/bills/house/HB0444.html
[An example a legislative bill regarding animal hoarding]
and finally from the Google Directory, this web page of
links:
Hoarding > Recreation > Pets > Issues > Hoarding
http://directory.google.com/Top/Recreation/Pets/Issues/Hoarding/
In addition, here are a few citations to published sources
regarding animal hoarding.
Health implications of animal hoarding
Author: Arluke, Arnie; Frost, Randy; Luke, Carter,and others
Source: Health & Social Work
v. 27 no. 2 May 2002 p. 125-136
Experiences and needs of adult protective services case managers when assisting clients who have companion animals
Author: Boat, Barbara W; Knight, Juliette C
Source: Journal of Elder Abuse & Neglect
v. 12 no. 3/4 2000 p. 145-155
Hoarding of animals: An under-recognized public health problem in a difficult-to-study population
Author: Patronek, Gary J
Source: Public Health Reports
v. 114 no. 1 January 1999 p. 81-87
Trash Menagerie: The Disturbing World of
Animal Hoarders.
Author: Tryba, Lynn.
Source: Psychology Today
v. 35 no. 6 November/December 2002 p. 22
It was interesting to see that animals themselves may also be hoarders as typified by this citation to a book on the subject
Food hoarding in animals
Author: Vander Wall, Stephen B.
Publication: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1990