Animal hoarding

Animal hoarding is keeping a higher-than-usual number of animals as domestic pets without ability to properly house or care for them, while at the same time denying this inability. Compulsive hoarding can be characterized as a symptom of mental disorder rather than deliberate cruelty towards animals. 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 them. 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.In sixteen cases, individuals were charged with one count of animal cruelty for their entire group of animals rather than one count of cruelty for each animal involved. In several other cases, hoarders were only charged with one count of failure to license or provide a rabies vaccination when there were dozens of animals involved. (a) Collects animals and fails to provide them with humane/adequate care; Animal hoarding is keeping a higher-than-usual number of animals as domestic pets without ability to properly house or care for them, while at the same time denying this inability. Compulsive hoarding can be characterized as a symptom of mental disorder rather than deliberate cruelty towards animals. 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 them. 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. An animal hoarder keeps an unusually large number of pets for their premises, and fails to care for them properly. A hoarder is distinguished from an animal breeder, who would have numerous animals as the central component of their business; this distinction can be problematic, however, as some hoarders are former breeders who have ceased selling and caring for their animals, while others will claim to be breeders as a psychological defense mechanism, or in hopes of forestalling intervention. Gary Patronek, director of the Center for Animals and Public Policy at Tufts University, defines hoarding as the 'pathological human behavior that involves a compulsive need to obtain and control animals, coupled with a failure to recognize their suffering'. According to another 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.' Along with other compulsive hoarding behaviors, it is linked in the DSM-IV to obsessive compulsive disorder and obsessive compulsive personality disorder. The DSM-5 includes a diagnosis of hoarding disorder. Alternatively, animal hoarding could be related to addiction, dementia, or even focal delusion. The number of animals involved alone is not a determinative factor in identifying hoarding. Instead, the issue is the owner's inability to provide care for the animals and the owner's refusal to acknowledge that both the animals and the household are deteriorating. For instance, in one animal hoarding case, 11 cats were seized from a trailer. The deputy police officer testified that the trailer smelled so strongly of feline waste that despite suffering from severe congestion at the time of the investigation, she had a hard time staying in there for more than a few minutes. The deputy further testified that she could not step anywhere in the trailer without stepping on fresh, old, or smeared fecal matter, and that even the stove and sink were filled with bio-hazardous waste. Yet, a Canadian woman, who died leaving 100 properly fed, spayed/neutered, vaccinated, and groomed cats, was not considered an animal hoarder because her animals were properly cared for.