Why? Why do people hoard animals?

[Bloo]

I think a hoarder is when the situation becomes out of hand and the animals start to suffer.

Yes Sylvia I agree !

 

[Dweenus]

Aww, I feel sorry for the animals AND the lady. Poor old woman. =(


I agree with AngelLady, she probably thought that she was doing the cats good, but she couldnt get arond to taking care of all of them. And she was probably lonely.

 

[JackDemp528]

I can tell loads of those stories. I work at the Hillside SPCA, and we see cruelty all the time. I got my little Shih Tzu Mazi from a cruelty we had, these people were getting evicted and they had 12 dogs, over 20 cats, an iguana, turtles, snakes, guinea pigs, sugar gliders, an African Bull Frog, two large oranda goldfish, pigeons, doves, and about 50 chickens, ducks, geese, and guinea hens. There were half dead litters of kittens, and most of the dogs were tied outside. I love pit bulls, but their three pits were tied out their whole lives and were extremely vicious so we had no choice but to euthanize. There were also rottie, and shep mixes tied out, two great danes, and a few other mixes, and inside the dogs had even worse lives, there were two shih tzus and a jack russel and the shih tzus were matted down to the skin. The house was full of trash, from the floor to the cieling, there was a small walk way through the whole house. These dogs never had a bed, they never had treats, and ate cat food that was simply thrown on the floor for them. When we got them in I swooped up the little shih tzu and took her right home after tow hours of shaving off that terrible smelling coat. Now she's the most spoiled dog ever.

There's my little Mazi. That was only a few days after I rescued her, and now she has a brand new hair cut, that I should get up soon. She was pretty shaggy there.

 

[snowyangel]

Very adorable jackdemp . I'm getting a rescue animal delivered to me soon. I can't wait to get him! But it's a surprise so you'll all have to wait.

 

[Opcn]

lol, I wonder how many people on here hoard fish. Personally I intend on having alot of animals when ?I get a place, because with the exception of predators alowed to run wild I like animals alot but I hope I never get called a hoarder. Parhaps someone could make a great deal of money by building houses designed for high density cat housing, with plastic walls and a grate covering a floor, Powerfull spray guns in every room. Feed troughts and a giant litterbox room. I'll bet that there are lots of crazy widowes out there who would take quite well to such a place. I'll bet its women who become hoarders more often because women get more emotionally attached, men are just less emotinaly compitent.

 

[JackDemp528]

Ohh SnowyAngel, I can't wait to see!

 

[Isis_Nebthet]

I've certainly run into a few male horders here. There was a guy with 120 dogs on his 2.5 acres. They were all beat up from being in all together. All of the dogs they took were euthed..They let him keep five....the legal limit is four unless you pay 500$/year then 16.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

What i don't understand is that when you hear of these cases where the animals are in their hundreds and living in appaling conditions, the owners also happen to be living in the same appaling conditions with the animals with animal poop and remains all over their house- how can you live in a place like that as a human being ?? Surely it must be a mega drain on their health and mental state??

 

[JackDemp528]

Yeah it is horrible. A lot of the time it's a nice person trying to help out by taking in a few strays. But sometimes they don't have much money and upon taking in these animals they can't find a low cost neuter and spay clinic. So then they don't know what to do, and you can start with 4 cats and in a year have over 30. A female cat can become pregnant again while still nursing her kittens. Then these people end up with too many and the situation is out of control.

Like right now at the shelter where I work we have a man who started with a few rabbits. Well you know the "Hump like bunnies" expression. Well they did, now he has over 60, and upon expecting his house they all live in a huge livingroom, no cages, and they get fresh greens everyday. But he just can't handle them. So he's been bringing them in like 20 at a time. But the females are still having babies everywhere. So we had to put 23 to sleep a few weeks ago because we just had no more room for rabbits, we have room for about 20 rabbits, but already had 20 rabbits, and could not handle anymore. So it's sad, because the animals end up hurting because of the irresponsibility of the human.

 

[Opcn]

why on earth would you euthenise Rabbits? they make good stew meat, you could have found a meat processor and done them for charity or something, IMO thats better than fillinga landfill or something. As far as hoarding goes rabbits arent that bad, I think next time he comes in you should endevor to put him in contact with a few petshops or depending on the breed a few farmers, I'll take a look around and see If I can find a website for the society of rabbit breeders for you if you like, but enought of getting off subject, I'll pm you.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

why on earth would you euthenise Rabbits? they make good stew meat, you could have found a meat processor and done them for charity or something, IMO thats better than fillinga landfill or something.

Yeah but you need a license to sell meat to shops and lots of other types of health and safety licenses to make sure you are selling healthy animals and euthanising them correctly for food produce, which is a very long and difficult process to obtain these sorts of licenses, and rabbit meat isn't very popular anyways.
Its a waste i know but the majority of animal rescue centres are working on a tight budget anyways.

 

[pica_nuttalli]

why on earth would you euthenise Rabbits? they make good stew meat, you could have found a meat processor and done them for charity or something, IMO thats better than fillinga landfill or something.

Yeah but you need a license to sell meat to shops and lots of other types of health and safety licenses to make sure you are selling healthy animals and euthanising them correctly for food produce

actually, that depends on the area. i know that in parts of Louisiana, its perfectly legal and acceptable to sell game meat to grocery shops. and i suspect that by "why euthanize rabbits", opcn meant "i'd have shot them" (which is his perogative and while a difficult thought for us squeamish people, done properly its not too much worse than putting the creature to sleep.)

 

[Opcn]

I most certainly wouldnot have shot them, you have to bleed rabits out, you bonk em good on the head and bleed em while the heart is still beating. Rabbits are a farm animal in all 50 states so you can as an individual (say the owner guy himself) butcher them, or have a buddy do it whatever, and then as a food item give them to a homles shelter or food kitchen, its not a complicated matter really, but you could always find a rabbit farmer to do it for you, then you could even sell the rabbits for profit.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I most certainly wouldnot have shot them, you have to bleed rabits out, you bonk em good on the head and bleed em while the heart is still beating.

Plus if you shoot somthing you end up getting lead shot in your meat which isn't nice when you unexpectedly crunch your teeth on a little peice of lead shot on your tasty roast pheasant .

 

[pica_nuttalli]

oops, my bad. i have to say i'd have an even harder time "bleeding them out" than just shooting them. ugh, the worst sound in the world is a rabbit scream.

i'm still troubled by people who hoard animals especially those who start the process out of kindness. my consideration of "hoarding" is when the number of animals exceeds the owner's ability to provide from them to the extent that simple maintenance cannot be accomplished (i.e. feeding, cleaning up wastes, controlling breeding in certain cases). if you cannot provide for an animal's needs, you should not attempt to own it!

--edit--
going to what sylvia mentioned earlier about hoarding fish: there are several people here who i think the term would apply to. they have insisted on purchasing fish that they do not have the ability to take care of, then get offended when informed that they've screwed up. i think the biggest cause of this hoarding is the "kindness" aspect--most fish hoarders excuse their behavior by saying "well, it was going to die in ____'s tank; i saved it!" that always makes me ask myself, which is worse: leaving the fish in the store or stunting it in the home aquarium?

i've said it before and i'll say it again. you aren't rescuing a fish or any animal if you cannot provide for its needs. you're just condemning it to a slightly different kind of suffering.