Melissa Kaplan's
Herp Care Collection
Last updated October 19, 2002

The dangers of rehabbers getting in over their heads

©2000 Melissa Kaplan

As the number of pets - especially exotic pets - increases, so too has the need for rescues: people or organizations who take in unwanted animals, get the sick and injured ones restored to health or, if necessary, humanely euthanized, and place the healthy ones in proper homes or facilities where they will be cared for properly for the rest of their lives. Along with the increase in number of people doing rescue, so has the incidence of rescuers burning out and, ultimately, providing less than adequate care to those they rescue.

Rescue vs. Refuge
To engage in proper and humane animal rescue, an individual or organization needs not only sufficient space to adequately house all the animals, but sufficient financial resources to pay for the animals' daily needs, equipment replacements, additional equipment as species or individuals with unusual needs are taken in, and to pay necessary veterinary expenses. In the case of individuals, the rescuer also needs adequate resources to pay for their own necessities: rent/mortgage, food, health care, etc.

Rescues, as a concept and in operation, need to be separated from refuges, which are entirely different. In rescues, the animals are removed or otherwise acquired from unsuitable situations, helped to recover if they are injured or ill, and then moved on to good homes where they will be cared for properly for the rest of their lives. While a person or organization doing rescue may have a core group of personal pets and/or animals who are regularly used in education programs, the rescued animals themselves are provided the necessary services, healed, stabilized with proper care and diet, perhaps tamed, and then placed in permanent homes.

Refuges, on the other hand, are the final stop for the majority of the animals they receive. Rather then move the animals on to permanent homes, they are kept, housed permanently at the refuge. Refuges are set up as such: they are usually nonprofit organizations with lots of land, paid staff, including a full or part-time veterinarian, or veterinarians who regularly donate their time and expertise to the care of the refuged animals, and a cadre of specially-trained, well-organized volunteer staff. Examples of refuges include Tippi Hedren's Shambala and Martine Collette's Wildlife Waystation.

Note: some refuges, due to taking in so many small cast-off exotics, have started adopting some of them out, such as Wildlife Waystation now adopting out green iguanas.

See the article Up for Discussion: Ethics and Resources on the problems increasingly encountered by wildlife rescues having to deal with exotic pets.

Sometimes, what starts out as a pet rescue slides inexorably into a refuge, without the resources of a proper refuge. This happens when the rescuer is unable to find good homes for the animals they've taken in and so the animal stay there...and stay there...and stay there. Because they too often find it difficult to say "no" when called, they keep taking animals in, while few if any lea

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rescues in the area. He would only take in healthy animals. Occasionally he would call the other turtle rescuers in the area to see if he could trade the sick ones he did end up with for healthy ones the rescuers had. In time, he stopped adopting turtles out, just acquired more and more. He claimed to be a refuge, but no one was ever allowed in to see his place. Unlike places like Casa de Tortuga and Shambala in southern California, refuges who regularly open their doors to the public for fundraising and educational purposes, this refuge just seems to be a collection of as many turtles as Joe can get.

An unintentional refuge is something most of us have read about occasionally in the newspaper or heard brief sound bytes on the television news. A friend of mine, who was an animal control officer, recounted the time she and her partner responded to a complaint by neighbors of an elderly woman who had, according to the neighbors, too many cats. When the officers finally gained admittance into the house, they found the floor inches deep in dried cat feces, hundreds of cats in every room, nook and cranny, litters of kittens (and mice) in closets, drawers and torn mattresses, bowls of dried cat food all over the place, the air thick with the stench of feces, rotting cat food, floating cat hair, dust...and worse. Did this elderly lady start out with the intention to mistreat cats by keeping them in filthy, overcrowded conditions? No. She started out by feeding neighborhood strays, then taking strays in, one by one, until a few became dozens, and dozens became hundreds, as her failing health and limited finances took her toll on being able to care for them. Why don't people in this situation call in for some help? Place the animals? Get help cleaning? It's difficult to say. In this case, it was an elderly woman, and so there may have been some decline in mental faculties. But cases like this have been reported where the person was much younger and supposedly mentally competent. In fact, there was a recent case in Sonoma County, involving a woman who lived and work elsewhere in the bay area, whose house for cats was finally entered by animal shelter officers who found over 200 cats.

Reptile rescues don't have the funding resources that mammals and birds rescues do, just by virtue of the fact that far fewer people deem reptiles "worth" spending millions of dollars on to save. Thus, most reptile rescuers, even if they are able to get donations end up funding a great deal of the expenses out of their own pocket.

Burnout
Burnout results from a number of factors:

·         The time and funds spent on caring for all the animals

·         Lack of help from others in providing care

·         Dealing with the public calling to get rid of their animals

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Melissa Kaplan's
Herp Care Collection
Last updated August 12, 2002

The Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium

Randy Frost PhD, Psychiatric Times, April 2000, XVII(4)

Over 600 animals were found in the home of a Los Angeles woman, arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty. Some of the animals were already dead and some so ill they had to be euthanized by Animal Services. The woman insisted the animals were well-cared for and her home was clean, despite physical evidence to the contrary. She refused to voluntarily surrender the animals to animal control. Her fear? They would be euthanized. This woman could be described as an animal hoarder.

According to Gini Barrett, director of the American Humane Association Western Regional Office (Tamaki, 1997), animal hoarders are well-known to animal care professionals. "Collectors exist in almost every community, large or small, rural or urban. They are in a state of denial that prevents them from seeing the filth or understanding their animals are sick, dying or dead. They need help," she said.

The Symptoms of Animal Hoarding
While animal care specialists recognize these people are in need of psychiatric help, almost no psychiatric literature exists on this topic. The existing literature on the hoarding of animals by human beings has been written by officials of the Humane Society of the United States and animal shelter operators (e.g., Lockwood and Cassidy, 1988). Only one case series appears in medical or psychological literature. Worth and Beck (1981) interviewed multiple pet owners identified from complaint files of the New York City department of health and animal control agency and from their own personal acquaintance. Most of those studied collected dogs, or cats; men more often collected dogs, and women more often collected cats. Nearly two-thirds of their sample were women, and 70% were unmarried. Social isolation was common but appeared to result from the hoarding behavior rather than causing it. Most participants reported their collecting started in childhood. Many had no telephone, public utilities or plumbing, and many hoarded inanimate objects as well.

The authors speculated that their participants adopted a parental role with respect to their animals. This resulted in reluctance to remove any animals, even when adequate homes were available. Many of the collectors emphasized that their animals gave them "unquestioning and uncritical love." They tended to personalize and anthropomorphosize their pets and viewed themselves as rescuers of suffering or unloved animals (Worth and Beck, 1981).

More recently, Patronek (1999) surveyed animal shelter operators about their experiences with people who hoard animals. Detailed information was obtained on 54 cases. An animal hoarder was defined as "someone who accumulates a large number of animals; fails to provide minimal standards of nutrition, sanitation and veterinary care; and fails to act on the deteriorating condition of the animals (including disease, starvation and even death) or the environment (severely overcrowded and unsanitary conditions), or the negative impact of the collection on their own health and well-being." These findings support some of Worth and Beck's conclusions. Most cases were female (76%), a large proportion (46%) were 60 years of age o

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People who hoard possessions frequently identify their possessions as central to their identity so that losing (i.e., discarding) a possession often produces a grief-like reaction and sense of loss of part of themselves. Preliminary data from the HARC study suggest a similar phenomenon with respect to animals, even when the animals are not longtime pets. It may be that the mere sight of an animal in need of a home prompts an emotional attachment so powerful that the animal must be acquired. Once acquired, the animal receives very little attention to its basic needs yet cannot be given away.

Pilot interviews by HARC are consistent with the attachment model in finding that childhood experiences of abuse, neglect or extreme instability in the family may play a role in the development of hoarding. In several cases, animals served as stable fixtures in otherwise chaotic homes. Perhaps, in this context, animals serve an emotionally comforting role for vulnerable individuals, and attachments normally reserved for people are transferred to emotionally safer animals.

The finding that most people with this problem tend to be older and female (Patronek, 1999) suggests a developmental and gender-role link that may also have to do with feelings of vulnerability. Most of the people interviewed as part of the HARC project were relatively isolated and socially anxious, perhaps causing interactions with animals to be more comfortable than interactions with people. In these cases, animals may come to replace people in the hoarder's social world, which is consistent with the tendency observed among those interviewed to maintain their living spaces more like animal pens than human homes. This may suggest a disturbance in the way human attachments are formed.

Beliefs about the nature and function of possessions are another function of this model (Frost and Hartl, 1996), with a central belief being the hoarder's responsibility not to waste or misuse the possession. We suspect that a similar belief is prominent among people who hoard animals. Specifically, our preliminary findings suggest that people who hoard animals often believe they have a special gift for communicating or empathizing with animals, and that this is their life's mission (i.e., responsibility).

Some hoarders also express the need to maintain control over possessions. This results in increasing isolation and suspiciousness of others. We hypothesize a similar need for control among animal hoarders.

Like people who hoard possessions, animal hoarders often lack insight into the problematic nature of their behavior. A common and peculiar characteristic of people who hoard animals is a persistent and powerful belief that they are providing proper care for their animals, despite clear evidence to the contrary. In some cases, the home environment is so seriously impaired that the house must be torn down (Patronek, 1999). Careful assessment is needed to determine if this reflects a delusional disorder or overvalued ideation in the context of OCD. Delusional levels of paranoia regarding the actions and intentions of animal control officers frequently accompany this irrational belief.

Hoarders often cope with their behavioral deficits by avoiding them as much as possible. By saving things, the uncomfortable process of decision making is avoided, as well as the distress that accompanies discarding a cherished possession (Frost and Gross, 1993). Beliefs about responsibility and control and feelings of loss are never challenged by discarding and thus become rigidified. Likewise, animal hoarders may avoid uncomfortable decisions about turning away strays or treating sick animals by ignoring the problem or convincing themselves the animal is well. Similarly, dead animals are sometimes left to lie, perhaps to avoid feeling upset, guilty or responsible for the death. Thus, avoidance of discomfort may play an important role in the delusional features and possibly in other symptoms of pathological animal collecting.

Treatments for Animal Hoarding
To date, no research has addressed strategies for resolving cases of animal hoarding. What is clear is that adjudication of cases rarely alters the behavior. Until models for this behavior are established and tested, our understanding of this problem will be limited. Like many psychological conditions, the causes of animal hoarding are probably multiple and, therefore, assessment of emotions, behavior and thoughts must be multifaceted to point the way toward successful treatment.

For example, individuals with delusional thinking about their animals may benefit from relevant medications. Those with extreme attachment to their anim

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animals are likely to require long-term treatments and probably alternative sources of emotional connectedness. It is unclear whether those who hold strong beliefs about euthanasia and their perceived mission to save animals will be dissuaded from their convictions. Alternatives may be to forcibly limit their access to animals to prevent future problems, while addressing other features that lead to inadequate care of existing animals.

Research on animal hoarding is in its infancy, despite its seriousness and the frequency with which it is described in the news media. Directions for work on this problem include creating comprehensive methods of assessing the features and potential causes of animal hoarding and identifying potentially effective interventions to address the problem.

Acknowledgment
The Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium is a collaborative effort to study the hoarding of animals. Members of the consortium include: Arnie Arluke, Ph.D., Northeastern University; Carter Luke, Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; Edward Messner, M.D., Massachusetts General Hospital; Gary Patronek, V.M.D., Ph.D., Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine; and Gail Steketee, Ph.D., Boston University.

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The 10ft Liger who's still growing...

He looks like something from a prehistoric age or a fantastic creation from Hollywood. But Hercules is very much living flesh and blood - as he proves every time he opens his gigantic mouth to roar. Part lion, part tiger, he is not just a big cat but a huge one,standing 10ft tall on his back legs. Called a liger, in reference to his crossbreed parentage, he is the largest of all the cat species.

On a typical day he will devour 20lb of meat, usually beef or chicken, and is capable of eating 100lb at a single setting. At just three years old, Hercules already weighs half a ton.

He is the accidental result of two enormous big cats living close together at the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, in Miami, Florida, and already dwarfs both his parents.
"Ligers are not something we planned on having," said institute owner Dr Bhagavan Antle. "We have lions and tigers living together in large enclosures and at first we had no idea how well one of
the lion boys was getting along with a tiger girl, then lo and behold we had a liger."

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Today there are believed to be a handful of ligers around the world and a similar number of tigons, the product of a tiger father and lion mother. Tigons are smaller than ligers and take on more physical characteristics of the tiger.

Famous cross-breeds

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I was trying copy and paste the pics of the tiger. It just doesn`t want too work. If anyone has any ideal how i can copy and paste the pics. Please let me Know It will copy, i just can`t paste.

Thank u Arlene

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Spawn and…….Wolves?

Definitely check out Spawn issue 147 and 148. Spawn on his journey to reclaim
lost memories and find out who took them, wanders to Minnesota. He is rescued
by a family when near death. On top of that he encounters corrupt hunters and
bizarre Wolves.

Let’s just say that McFarlane, the author of the series, paints Wolves in an
interesting and positive manner.

~Mike Wagner -- Freelance Wolf Activist-- and Co-Host of Wolf Tracks
http://www.heartofthewolf.org
http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/TRACKS

For those who want to know what happens and not get the issues……………

PLOT SPOILER:


Spawn happens to be rescued by a family, they warn of hunters in the area, and
bizarre Wolves. Before he encounters the hunters who he feels he must rescue,
the hunters clearly are against the protection of Wolves that are in place by
the DNR (Although the DNR is of course corrupt). One of them even is a jerk to
his wife.

Not too long after this Spawn arrives and is ambushed by the unusual Wolves. He
fends them off and attempts to rescue the hunters. The hunters don’t care and
start attacking Spawn. Spawn is forced to kill the hunters. Looking around, the
Wolves are gone. He returns to the family dwelling that he was allowed to stay
in. The family disappeared without a trace, and after this incident, no hunters
or others are keen on returning to the area.

In issue 148, it is revealed that the family who rescued him was the Wolves.

So Spawn was rescued by Wolves. Kind of reminds me of Mowgli and the Wolf pack
in the Jungle Book.

Also, there is a action figure set by Spawn.com that is a darker more realistic
version of fairy tales. One of them is Red Riding Hood, brutal killer who is
not cute, nor innocent. And proudly holds up an eviscerated Wolf.

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Beware of Missy K. of International Wildlife Rescue on Care2.

Missy K., co founder of IWR on Care unfairly banned me. This is because one of her friends made a mistake by mistaking my work.

Of course, I responded.

Here is the transcript. Don’t trust or associate with her, if I were you.

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She made a grievous error as it was revealed. And she apologized for it. It is my duty to point out when something dangerous occurs. If you don't like that, you can delete a message. And if you have a problem with something public, it is rather strange that you didn't contact me privately. In fact you bash me in return and ban me from a group.

Real classy. And btw, since you did something really dirty here against myself, a hardworking activist, it will be revealed to all of my contacts and groups...

Mike Wagner

Freelance Wolf Activist

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Missy K’s message:

I dont see anything bizarre about this letter that Arlene sent you

I also dont appreciate my friend and cohost being publicly 'bashed' by yourself over NM.If you have a problem with Arlene then keep it to yourself

I have removed you from IWR- Not Arlene

Original Message:

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I received a bizarre letter, from Arlene Longson of Girls Gone Fishing, a member also of Care2.

 Take a look, she clearly bashes my honest work, yet supports the concept at the end of it. And she to boot blatantly calls me an idiot along with my work.

 Gotta love sheep in Wolves clothing..

http://www.heartofthewolf.org/GGF.txt

Mike Wagner

Freelance Wolf Activist-- and Co-Host of Wolf Tracks

http://www.heartofthewolf.org

http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/TRACKS

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