I don't think it's a puppy mill, since he didn't sell any of the dogs. He just kept more and more of them. I think those poor dogs and cats have been victim of a hoarder.
"Hoarding" is a psychological disorder. It occurs when animal lovers or rescuers take on more animals than they can manage or are for; thus, they unintentionally become passive abusers themselves. Hoarding can becomes both a cruelty issue and a public safety (health) issue. It a psychological disorder that effects mainly people over the age of 60, that never got married and have lived alone almost all of their life. The pets become central to the hoarder's core identity. The hoarder develops a strong need for control, and just the thought of losing an animal can produce an intense grief-like reaction. Animal hoarders think they're helping their furry friends, but mostly they're just feeding their own twisted psyches.
The Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium defines an animal hoarder as someone who has:
*Accumulated a large number of animals, overwhelming that person's ability to provide even minimal standards of nutrition, sanitation, and veterinary care
*Failed to acknowledge the deteriorating condition of the animals (including disease, starvation, and even death) and environment (severe overcrowding, very unsanitary conditions)
*Failed to recognize the negative effect of the collection on his or her own health and well-being, and on that of other household members.
Most of this info has been taken from a Salon article titled : Loving animals to death.
I still don't understand how hoarder's can't see that their pets are getting ill and are dying because of them. Perhaps it's like those anorexic girls that are super skinny but still see themselves as fat girls when they look at themselves. The problem is obvious to everybody but they don't seem to be able to see it. So strange... |