At Tufts University, there is a web page that addresses this phenomena, the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium. If you've never walked into a property of a hoarder, you might be shocked. I went to a former breed rescue, walking in after most of the dogs had been confiscated and what I noticed first was the smell. Not only did the kennels smell, but the office with the urine-soaked carpet, shiny with not quite cleaned off feces. There were open pits that smelled of urine in the kennels. One held a dead rat. Since then, HARC has photos similar to these on its website.
I have known of three other local non-profit animal rescue operations that had gone bad. HARC calls these the "rescue or shelter" type of hoarder.
I'm not counting the one with the four hundred, located in Lancaster nor the one with St. Bernards or the one with the tigers. It was easy to shrug off the infamous cat ladies, but this is a mental illness, compassion gone wrong. The financial cost to the community is enormous and the suffering of animals is impossible to measure.
Four hundred animals require a lot of love and require a lot of hard cash. If you have something to spare, help insure that the second time around, these animals will really be saved.
Article comments
1 - Cheri
The name of the 400 animal hoarder is Ivan George Callais. Gentle Barn has been removed from aiding.
Ivan has never been compassionate. Everytime he is caught he just moves to another location and starts again. He lives in a camper. In 2000 he was busted in Woodland Hills, CA with 70 dogs. New Leash on Life took all the dogs to temporary donated land and brought them back one by one when they were adopotable. Busted in 2004 in Gorman.
He uses the animals to get donations and then lives off the donations, while the animals suffer.
He is once again banned from adopting at LA City & County shelters. Check out.
The only love he has is for himself. Once again the rescue community must deal with his inhumane treatment of animals.
BE AWARE!
2 - Purple Tigress
I won't analyze the reasons he collects. I'll leave that to the experts at the HARC. Sometimes people just want attention or to be seen as inherently good or be praised because they are doing what seems to be good. I think most collectors move around only to begin again. I think some people do start collecting or breeding to make money, particularly in the case of pure breed dogs.
There are some dogs left over from two 2007 animal abuse cases in Houston and New York. The Houston collies have been divided between collie rescue non-profit organizations.
In Marshall, TX, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals rescued 200 animals, including dogs guinea pigs, bearded dragons and 26 hissing cockroaches.
Even hissing cockroaches can suffer neglect.
3 - Angry
I am an owner of a former "Gorman" dog, a dog that was so malnourished and unhealthy when they rescued him from this sick man back in 2004. I am appalled that he was never charged for the Gorman abuse and that he was allowed to just go on and do this all again. Why is he not in jail? Someone needs to explain that to me. I am disgusted.
4 - Purple Tigress
I followed a case in the late 1990s. The woman had moved from county to county or city to city. There is no national data base although the Website www.pet-abuse.com does a good job, it is an informal group.
In the past, animal hoarding, for whatever reason, wasn't taken very seriously as a social problem just as animal abuse wasn't seen as an early sign of deeper and more costly psychological problems in humans.
It is only recently that people have begun to study the problem of hoarding as they are now at Tufts and that law enforcement has recognized that the abuse and torture of animals often is a predictor of a person's probable evolution toward the abuse and torture of human victims.
Perhaps someday there will be a national animal abuse data base but for something like that to be effective various laws would need to be changed. In many cases, a person convicted of animal abuse is not prohibited from owning animals or if so, only within a certain city, precinct or district.
5 - AgentC
Cheri is probably Mrs. Mark Kriski, wife of the KTLA news man. Cheri used Ivan as a dogsitter and gave him money after his Woodland Hills incident. The Kriskis gave Ivan their dog to watch while they went on vacation time and time again. They knew he was an animal freak but still had no problem letting him watch over their pet.
6 - cat lover
Is there a fax number someone could anonymously report a neighbor who has a cage of cats & kittens, non seem to be neutered as a 5 day old kitten was found on a neighbors yard late one night. thank you
(Los Angeles 90046)
7 - needinfo
Is animal hoarding the same as animal breeding? Is a person who makes a formal statement to the authorities that she fully intended to board pure breed animals a hoarder? The case I refer to is recent and has been in the news. There were multiple animals dead and alive. All were pure breed. The conditions of the animals were filthy as well as the living conditions. Some died, some lived, some are still healing. This person had thrown away the dead dogs in the local dumpster. So, my question to you all is the above. Are hoarders and animal breeders such as this person one in the same? I am confused.