You know, hoarding is such a hard topic to talk about for several reasons:
1. It is possible for some people to have a lot of ferrets and provide a
wonderful home for them so they obviously are not hoarders
2. There are folks and shelters here who have wound up with the ferrets
of hoarders, either when the hoarders realized what they were doing
and sought help, or when the law cracked down on the hoarders and
took the animals away. This is sure to happen again.
3. There have been people here at the FML who did hoard.
4. There have been hoarders here at the FML who relapsed and again began
hoarding.
I guess the key thing to remember is this: hoarding can't be told by
numbers alone. It is told by conditions since rather than being a
numbers thing it is a form of abuse driven by a compulsive disorder
in which the people * do not know * that they are abusing the animals
because they are so controlled by their compulsion/obsession.
Sadly, those who worry and want to check the questions usually are not
themselves hoarders, which is why it is important that such materials be
read by everyone. Hoarders have a tendency to not know what they are
doing, but there is always the hope that they will realize in time to
avoid deaths or at least many needless animal deaths.
Here are a few of the sorts of questions that are asked in combination.
I'm doing this from memory but you can find this info in some very
informative articles that are among the health and legislation sites
in the critical refs section of http://www.ferretcongress.org
A. Can health care be provided? Are the numbers of the animals low
enough that if you had a major sweep of serious illness or injury
could you provide care?
B. Can the home be kept reasonably clean? Feces in bed, exposed
electrical wires, inability to use things like sinks or tables for their
standard uses does not qualify as reasonably clean. (Plain old messy is
within normal ranges and not something to worry about.)
C. Do you repeatedly think that you are the only one who can help
animals instead of stepping back and imposing limits on yourself while
knowing that there are other capable souls out there.
In the worst cases there are animals appearing and disappearing -- dying,
sometimes in the incredibly horrible cases even being "stored" in
vehicles, refrigerators, or left where they drop.
Those are my own wordings and the list is anything but complete. This
is an important and debilitating problem which people tend to grow into
without realizing that they are doing so till the compulsion controls
them rather than them being in charge of their own lives without them
even realizing it. It kills a great many animals even while the people
are trying to do good. As you can see, this is not the situation where
inspected shelters are involved, nor large households with good care
given so those in such situations aren't hoarders, but it is important
that people take those tests and think seriously because it is by doing
so that hoarders or those tending toward hoarding will recognize their
own problems and seek help before inadvertently hurting too many animals,
and it is by understanding the disorder that others can seek governmental
intervention through health departments, housing inspectors (these homes
sometimes get so bad that they need to be condemned rather than being
ones which can be cleaned), local mental health organizations, etc. when
they know a hoarder who needs help but it otherwise unreachable.
So, again: hoarding is not entirely a numbers situation; it involves a
serious illness which controls the person and which creates an unsafe
environment for the animals, for the person, and sometimes for the
neighboring community. Markers include things like an inability to
recognize that others can help animals, an inability to provide
veterinary care, unsafe and filthy living conditions, etc. It is an
important and terribly tragic problem which people should learn about
because it is through such learning that help is found.
[Posted in FML issue 4185]
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