Dogs arrived at CHS from Hoarding Seizure

In some cases it all starts with the good intentions of the owners. The belief is often that they are the best, maybe the only, caretakers for their animals. More animals are “rescued.” Then things get out of hand.

It’s useful to note that it’s also painful for humans in these scenarios. After all, the hoarding started simply as a means of taking care of discarded pets. But it quickly expands to numbers that are impossible to care for by their captors. Animal hoarding is now considered a mental illness that requires psychiatric treatment.

But who suffers most? Of course, it is the animals trapped in this strange circumstance. As the number of animals expands in the home of the hoarders, the care for those same animals, through both the time required for care and the financial burden of providing for an exploding population of animals, becomes a virtual impossibility. Just imagine, animals caught in these situations can be living in an almost concentration camp atmosphere with little food and containment in filthy living circumstances or they are trapped in tiny, locked cages. There is often no medical treatment given to the animals in need, and populations can rapidly explode due to neglect of spaying and neutering the animals in their care. It’s not unusual to find animals housed in these miserable conditions dead from starvation or lack of water.   Certainly most rescue shelters have taken in animals caught in the misery of a hoarding situation. Cascades Humane Society has frequently done so. Currently, we have taken in a group of small dogs that were recently living in a hoarding situation. Very often dogs and cats coming from a hoarding home have had little socialization with people. They’re often more at ease with other animals than with people. At first arrival here these dogs were very shy and scared of human contact. It’s amazing to see how quickly many of them have been willing to trust people once again. Now we see a little wag of a tail; a willingness to greet us at the front of the kennel; fear replaced with a sense of curiosity.

Most pets, over time, are amazingly resilient and can learn the ropes of happily living in a home. These pets do need more time and extra patience than is typical of a usual shelter pet, to adjust to a normal, loving home. It’s interesting, even with these challenges, CHS has rarely seen animals who once lived in a hoarding situation returned to our shelter for any reason.

None of this would ever be possible without you—our supporters and adopters who take a chance and adopt animals from these situations. Here at CHS, we are always grateful for being able to do this work and find loving homes for the animals that pass through our doors. It just feels great to be able to right a little bit of the world’s wrongs and be part of that happy ending for every animal that finds that loving home.