When it comes to animal hoarding — the collecting of large numbers of pets — the Fechner-Weber Principle applies. This states that a man dropped in a tank of boiling water will scream with pain, but if he is submerged in room-temperature water that is then raised one degree an hour, he will quietly boil to death without noticing.
Profile of an animal hoarder: One study found,
- Three-quarters of hoarders are female.
- Nearly half of all hoarders are 60 years or older; 37% are between 40 and 59 years of age.
- Almost three-quarters of hoarders are single, divorced, or widowed; just over half live alone.
- Available data reveals many hoarders are retired, unemployed, or receiving disability payments.
- In one study, cats were involved in 65% of cases, dogs in 60%, farm animals in 11% and birds in 11%. An average of 39 animals are involved in each case, but four cases noted involved more than 100 animals.
- In 80% of the cases, some animals were found dead or in severe condition.
- The reasons hoarders offer for their behavior include a love of animals; a view of the animals as surrogate children; feelings that no one else would care for the animals; and a fear that the animals would be euthanized if taken to a shelter.
- In 38 of the 49 cases reviewed for one study where residences were inspected, the premises were described as heavily cluttered and unsanitary.
- Responses of the particular study indicate that cases were often protracted and difficult to resolve; even after removal of the animals, resumption of hoarding was common.
- Outside government agencies were involved or consulted in 36 of the 54 cases (67%), but respondents expressed frustration at the inability or unwillingness of mental health, social service, and public health agencies to participate.
(“When you take them to court, what are you going to do with these people?” Keith Roehr, Veterinarian with the Colorado Department of Agriculture. Old, ailing and practically penniless, they have little to lose.
Seventy percent of animal collectors are single, and researchers often trace their animal-collecting habit back to the significant event that left them alone, typically a divorce or death. Eighty percent of animal hoarders also compulsively collect other objects. (typically stacks of trash.) Sixty-five percent hoard cats; 60 percent collect dogs. The overlap is caused by those who collect both.
The question that continues to plague researchers who study the interaction between humans and animals is, of course, why? Can love really be so blind?
No one has found an answer. For starters, surrounding yourself with a lot of animals isn’t always bad. “Everybody’s different,” notes hoarding researcher Novoryta. “There are people out there who can’t handle five animals. But some can handle twenty.”
Occasionally well-educated and articulate, hoarders can also be on the ball in the rest of their lives. In Colorado, Luann Strickland, wife of former state senator and current Adams County Commissioner Ted Strickland, was charged with animal cruelty after investigators in 1991 found she’d collected between 400 and 500 cats and dogs, some of which, investigators said, were suffering from neglect.
One obvious symptom all hoarders seem to share is a distorted view of reality: None can see the squalor that is immediately apparent to outsiders. “We frequently ask, ‘Is there anything about your life that you’d like to change?'” says Randall Lockwood, whose Ph.D. in psychology comes in handy in his work as vice president of research and education outreach at the Humane Society of the United States. “And they look around” — many times at feces piled several feet high and the smell of urine so powerful that visitors must wear masks — “and say, ‘No, not really. Maybe a little more room would be nice.'”
Hoarding touches on several other psychiatric conditions, too, obsessive-compulsive disorder being the most common. But the behavior also contains seeds of attachment disorder (animals are less scary than people), Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (animals’ suffering brings attention to the owner), zoophilia (sexual attraction to animals) and addiction behavior.
Taken from: www.animalsheltering.org and www.westword.com
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