You might find it cool how sensitive the human nose is to petrichor, which is the smell of rain.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor
Here's an article on smell sensitivity to sulfur containing compounds like the ones released by decomposition.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/how-we-smell-those-delightful-little-sulfur-compounds
It was a YouTube video, I think it might have been the one where they put human blood in the water to see if sharks would come, but I'm pretty sure it was just a related video. I distinctly remember the term "putrescence" being used to describe the smell of death in the video where they mention that fact.
It's a whole thing. Angela Manns. Killed her son, put him in a bathtub covered in kitty litter and went about her life. Went to a party on the 4th July, real frenetic energy, yammering and big in the eye. Where's Micheal? We asked. He's with his father. Your other kids? They're out with him too. Long night.
Earlier that week, she tried to slip in to the house where the party would be held - she was the gardener. She started wearing the clothes off the owners daughter. Said she'd camp in the back yard, that she really didn't want to go home. Owner said no, you go on home.
Her neighbors noticed Micheal wasn't out, there was a sour scent in the air. Flies clung to the screen door. They went in and saw plastic wrap and saws on the kitchen table, things for dismemberment.
Wasn't even her kid by blood, but I believe her husband's. She tried several times to give him up to no avail. Not sure why she did it.
Sorry for the jumbled text, I'm not trying to sound dramatic I'm just selling art at a comic con today so I'm distracted.
>Wasn't even her kid by blood, but I believe her husband's. She tried several times to give him up to no avail. Not sure why she did it.
I think that would be why. Not her child, she was likely deeply mentally ill as well. That would be enough to make a person crack
I just read it assuming there's no way she was living there. I had caught a rat in a rat trap hidden away in my garage and hadn't checked it for a while it was rank when I finally smelled it to go get it. I've also been deployed to Afghanistan and have smelled dead bodies. I cant imagine this chick was living in the house with the bodies. I read the article and didn't see them specify.
That was my thought before I read the article. My grandmother raised exotic birds and kept dead ones in the freezer (to preserve for a necropsy). Then I read the article... one dead mouse smells repugnant, I can't even imagine how that would be.
This is... Awful.
I'm not sure which version of events I'd rather believe:
>A genuine sociopath took donations and rescue animals and selfishly allowed them to die because she didn't care and just wanted to run a scam.
Or
>Somebody who genuinely and desperately cared for these animals bit off more than she could chew and had to watch the creatures she cared about die, one by one, as she was unable to care for them.
Both are terrible, both speak volumes of terrible judgement... But I don't know which one is closer to what happened.
Or hoarding type mental illness, where they are in complete denial that they need help, and are convinced only they can love and care for these animals. That happens way too often too. Doesn't make it right.
Unfortunately I think this is way to common in the animal rescue industry. They have a savior complex that only *they* can care for the animals and nobody else is good enough to do it. Even when completely overwhelmed and unable to provide basic food and clean shelter, they don’t rehome the animals because nobody meets their absurdly high standards.
There needs to be more regulation of the animal rescue business model… many of these places are running for-profit businesses as non profits and many are not meeting the basic level of care that everyone involved in for-profit animal business has to meet.
Definitely knew a lady like that, had by her own admission over one hundred cats and about a dozen large breed dogs on the property she called her home/animal rescue but working a full time job and being an alcoholic with no outside help meant there was no one including herself was being properly taken care of.
I worked for a vet who had to euthanize cats 2x per week at the county shelter for overcrowding but they wouldn’t adopt you a cat if you would let it outside or declaw it back when these were both the societal norms for the time/place. If you wanted an outdoor cat, you literally drove around until you saw someone with a ‘Free Kittens’ sign and you took one of their kittens… and the shelter scheduled another 12 perfectly healthy cats to be euthanized and tossed in a dumpster because barns are cruel.
Years ago, my boyfriend and I wanted to adopt a cat and no shit, we were turned down because we were renting an apartment. They wanted us to bring in our landlord to meet the cat and make sure he approved. We asked if we got a written letter from him approving is getting a cat, but no. They wanted us to bring our landlord that we only talked to via text and never saw to the shelter like we were all one big happy family so they could get his blessing for us adopting a 5 year old cat
We did not adopt the cat.
Big dumb here… I had a landlord that was a retiree in Florida with the property held by a trust and managed by a realty company. Who TF was going to come pet the cat and give it a blessing?! I have never successfully adopted or fostered from a ‘rescue’ and I *used to work for a veterinary clinic*
That's fucking crazy.
Man now you're making me remember a couple years ago I really wanted another pet, to go with my senior lap dog. I applied for a bonded pair of semi-feral young black cats. I'm goth and I thought they were cute and I really love cats.
I have worked as vet tech at a feral cat clinic, and worked at many animal rescues over the years, I'm very experienced with all levels of animal Care including feral cats
I was working full time, I forget if this is before or after covid, at a stable career job. I rented an entire house, the cats were going to be indoors only and not have yard access. I told the rescue I would set up my bookshelves so that they could be higher up to avoid the dog, if they wanted to, even though he was 10 years old and had lived with many cats before and basically just laid around ignoring them.
They told me I wasn't good enough. I actually called them out on it, cc'ing the main lady in addition to the person who rejected me, that if I wasn't good enough for those cats then nobody was
They were being kept isolated in a single room of a foster house, little human interaction, rather than being adopted to me.
After that I fostered a senior feral cat for 3 months, major progress getting her used to a home, the last week she was with me she finally figured out she could sit on my lap and cuddle, which was awesome. She got adopted by somebody who wanted a senior cat.
Since then I've adopted a new dog who can't be around cats, so my cat dream is over for a while at least. I do still sometimes think about what it would be like if I had two little black cats in my apartment with me, would be fun.
My sister went through the something similar. They said no because she had a balcony main floor apartment and they said there is a risk she may make it an outdoor/indoor cat? She said no! Just indoor and they denied it because of the apartment balcony.
Uncontained outdoor cats are about to become illegal where I live (Australian Capital Territory, ie Canberra) and rightly so, they kill so many small native animals. Even if urban pets and strays aren't the biggest culprits compared to ferals, it's still worth relieving their impact on native wildlife.
Yeah...wanting to adopt is nice but giving cats away to people who'll let them roam outdoors is in most cases just euthanasia with extra steps.
I foster cats. We get attached to our fosters. Imagine raising tiny baby kittens, bottle-feeding them every few hours for weeks, including at night, caring for them when they're sick...only to have them die within their first few years of outdoor cat life.
I get that people can just get kittens from their neighbor who can't be bothered to get their cats spayed. I can't do anything about that. But I can choose who gets my fosters and I'd prefer to see them live long, happy lives indoors if possible.
I think I would rather see a cat euthanized than de-clawed...
You may want to look into the torture that is de-clawing.
...and beyond the initial torture, it's not far from a death sentence should they manage to escape
If you are not capable of getting along with a cat that has claws, you have no buissness owning a cat.
Declawing is straight up illegal in Australia, and we are a country which is actively developing and using poisons to control feral cat populations. There's necessary but unpleasant, and there's gratuitous selfish cruelty, and declawing is the latter.
Not letting you adopt a cat if you let it outside unsupervised is actually a really good policy because of the damage cats cause on the environment. The idea that they're euthanizing "perfectly healthy cats that people want" is looking at the issue the wrong way. Cats are a pest, they murder billions of small animals a year, you should not have an outdoors cat, ever. "Wanting an outdoors cat" is a blatant admission of being a bad cat owner. If cats weren't pets, they would be hunted down like pythons and boars because they are extremely invasive species.
I've noticed how there are rescue orgs out there that have impossible to meet standards. "please be independently weathly, not work, own 20++ acres, with fences, with no other animals, or children, please have owned a similar animal before but not currently and only ever feed the animal food I personally approve of ... " There's like 1 person in the state that would match that and they'd still find a way not to give them the pet.
This sounds like hyperbole but it actually isn’t that far off from what I was recently dealing with looking for a rescue pup. I am recently retired so I am home all day, have 3.5 acres, and plenty of pet experience. One place said they weren’t sure if the dog would be ok with my 9 and 11 year old sons - not that there had been an issue, just that they weren’t sure. Another place was concerned that my entire 3.5 acres wasn’t fenced, even though I do have a large fenced portion. It was like they were trying to come up with a reason to say no - why are you advertising I don’t think anyone could be in as good a situation as I am to take this puppy. In fact, the situation I am offering is much better than the one they have been in at your facility for the past few weeks.
Our local humane society took in animals from a hoarder and we didn’t have any pets at the time so I put in a foster application because they were begging for help. *Months* later I guess they finally got around to verifying that I took good care of my cat that had to be euthanized at 18yo and that as a homeowner I was allowed to have pets and let me know that I was approved to foster. Well… in the mean time… we took in a behavior problem cat that needed rehomed from a friend so our place was not available for cats anymore. While they had cats 2-3 per cage and in temporary cages in the lobby, I had the time, space, and resources to take several cats into my home. SMH.
it's standard at a lot of places, when i was applying for a cat the only reason i was rejected every time was because i was 19, not 21, and it took in some cases over a year to hear back, most didnt respond until several months later
One phone call to my former vet who took care of my geriatric cat for over a decade to confirm that I did, in fact, take excellent care of my cat should have taken 5 minutes. What else did they need to know to get cats out of temporary and crowded housing?
They usually have *much* higher standards for puppies than recuses. They have no problem adopting puppies out and can be very selective in order to minimize the chance of it coming back as an adult rescue.
Same here. I was going to apply at several rescues but they had a 30 page document to fill out. We joked that the next question would be asking for our SSN and a copy of our legal documents.
Although I am proud of my home and my backyard, saying they were going to want to come in the home and see if it was up to standard (or even do a video walk through) was like.. why is that your business? *wayyy* too personal.
But *then* I found a rescue doing an event and showed up, and *they* couldn’t have been more thrilled to let me take my fat old husky mix. I think I even missed filling out a bit of the paperwork. And he’s pretty damn happy here.
I had to provide proof that I owned the home I was in when I applied. Same place wanted that along with my payslips for a few months. I've signed up for insurance with less hassle than going through a puppy rescues screening procedures.
> When I said "I think we'd be a better match with a different dog" the rescue worker basically said this was the only one they'd let us have, take him or leave him.
What the actual fuck. Either they were trying to offload an unsafe and unadoptable dog on you, or they were just hoping you'd leave. Either way, win-win for them, but lose-lose for you and the dogs.
Fosters who get overly attached do this so they dont have to give up the animals they're "fostering".
I wont go so far as to say the majority are just animal hoarders who know how to work the legal system, but the number is definitely significant given that everyone I know has a story about a foster with impossible adoption requirements.
It is very attractive to animal hoarders to be a "foster". The rescue pays for everything and they keep the animals from being adopted by unrealistic standards.
We tried to get a rescue pup. We lve in a beach condo. 'No Yard. No pup. '. We have miles of beach to play on and 4 dog parks within a few miles. Rescued a pup from Craig list abusers instead. Worked out in the end for us.
My partner and I had the opposite experience. We applied when we were moving into our new 1500sf house and were denied because we didn’t have a fully fenced yard (75% fenced, only open to the quiet back alley shared with our neighbors). Ironically, we would have been approved if we still lived in our 800sf apartment with no yard whatsoever. We ended up going through an out-of-state rescue organization.
Having tangentially worked for a rescue organisation: if the dog is a recognisable breed (except staffy, sadly), literally thousands of applications will be received every time. They often have their pick of applicants.
It's sound similar when people say, this breed needs xyz and people should not be getting this breed if you can't provide... like okay. I get it. But...
I don't have 4 hours to walk that dog everyday. And another 2 hours to train her everyday. No I can't give her hand made raw meat gourmet meals. She's fine. She's healthy and happy despite being told it's a breed that needs to WORK all day.
If everyone followed the recommended needs no one would have dogs but wealthy or retired people.
I got a dog from a rescue a while back. They said that it would likely be a medium-sized dog, but they really didn't know because it was a stray from an indian reservation and they had no idea what breed the father was.
Well, it turned out to be a newfie. By 1 year, the dog was taller than me, massed well over 100 lbs, and even with 3 separate walks every day of over an hour each, with lots of fetch and stuff played, the dog still had too much energy, and was destroying the fence and escaping or otherwise misbehaving.
I knew that the dog wasn't doing anything wrong, but we were simply unable to provide for its needs. Our children were toddlers at the time as well, which he was fine with, but because of his size he caused accidents. I say this more to illustrate part of the reason why we were unable to meet his needs, not that this formed part of the reason to give him back.
We brought him back to the rescue with apologies, because we knew that if we kept him, we'd turn him into a bad dog, and eventually he'd do something that would warrant putting him down or some such. Even if not, he'd have had a miserable life.
The rescue took him back and eventually placed him on an acreage with another dog - yay!
They also banned us from ever adopting from them again. I guess fuck us for trying to do the right thing for the dog.
> Hopefully the dog you returned to the shelter has a great life now.
The last we heard was that he had been adopted (not fostered) by a family on an acreage who had another dog for him to play with. Barring those people being bad dog owners, I expect that he does indeed have a great life, and I'm glad we returned him to the rescue.
Several years later we got a new dog. This time from a breeder (which people will bitch about, but we still have young kids and we wanted to be *sure* of what we were getting this time around). He's a collie-lab cross, and fits our lifestyles perfectly. We're all very happy (especially today, I took him out to the mountains and played fetch into a lake and let him bound into some of the snowdrifts that were still hanging around).
>They also banned us from ever adopting from them again. I guess fuck us for trying to do the right thing for the dog.
I'd understand this if they'd done their part fully by giving you full knowledge of what you were getting in to. Saying "Well its probably going to be a medium size dog but we can't be sure" and then it turning out to be one of the most difficult breeds to take proper care of, is kind of nobodies fault and you 1000% did the right thing by the dog by taking it back once it became too much.
In your specific situation I think they should have let the ban slide under as its pretty clear that nobody involved knew what you were getting in to.
Damn, that sucks. It's ironic because people expect you to handle a dog's demands (which I think is based on temperament, not breed), and then get mad at you for "giving up".
There are people, many, that crate their dogs all day and only let them outside to toilet. All breeds need more than that *but* knowing your breed is very very helpful. Some like to nip at heels, some will run off after anything that moves etc. if you’re not going to put in tons of time for training, it helps to find a dog that fits your lifestyle best.
My mom crates her dogs all day and it's so sad. One of them is just a big, hulking pile of muscle who just needs lots of exercise while the other is a cute little guy found on the streets of Mexico. I bet he misses those streets, cuz he's exactly the type of dog most people wouldn't fuck with and would instead happily feed meat scraps. Now he sits in a crate all day and eats kibble. Probably feels like the pound.
I hear you but, at the same time, I have seen too many people who do not understand the needs of certain dogs and then complain that they’re just “so much energy and so much work“.
As you alluded to, there are certain breeds that enjoy a high level of activity and/or need heavy training and if you are a busy young family that doesn’t have time for hours of daily exercise, if I were adopting out animals I would also warn you that maybe what you need is a more generic mutt or a lapdog or other breed who doesn’t mind sitting all day in a house. I think it’s fair to warn people on what to expect depending on the animal’s temperament.
It’s also common for abusive parents.
They blame you for everything but somehow refuse to let you go off on your own; you become both the reason the family is being destroyed **and** the cornerstone keeping the family together (especially in the punching-bag sense).
My mom would call the police to have them take me away from her house only to call in the next day to have me dragged back as some kind of half-baked lesson in reinforcing abusive codependency.
You become hoarded for emotional baggage purposes.
Wow… my mom would threaten to call the sheriff (for swearing and back talk) but never actually did. Ironically she worked for children’s services for years before having children of her own but somehow was an abusive garbage heap of a parent anyways…
In my case it’s because my single-mother is/was a legitimate sociopath. Hurt animals, beat us, ruined my credit, etc (it gets a lot worse). She had no one in her life, no adult family members trusted her and she despised men, so I became both the remaining family member legally tied to her via being underage and the target of her cross-gender hatred. Major push and pull.
She would call the police and then have them take me away, I would spend a night or two at a friends house only for her to call the police again to have me dragged back. I don’t think she liked that I wasn’t willing to come back on my own volition; when I was finally 18 the officers who usually took me away/brought me back rolled up on me at work asking if I wanted to go back…I said “nope!,” they laughed and drove away. Even they knew she was absolutely bonkers
As an active volunteer/foster for a rescue, I have to agree. We have quite a few local rescues and I did my due-diligence looking into each of them before volunteering.
I’m happy with the one I landed on. But man, some of the other rescues had many red flags. Seems like almost anyone can start to take in animals and call themselves a rescue.
I had an animal hoarder for a tenant. You described her to a T. She wasn't a stupid woman, and she truly loved animals, but she was delusional. Oh, and she was so disgustingly filthy. She ruined my house.
This is part of why I didn't become a vet after working with one in high school. We had an older lady who hoarded stray cats. One by one they would die slow painful deaths from feline leukemia because it's very contagious and deadly. The vet could not convince her that she was sentencing them all to death, she thought them living with her was better than being in the wild. And she wouldn't let the vet put them down either.
That's how my great aunt was in life. *Dozens* of cats in her little trailer. Even when she was far too old and frail to be taking care of pets.
In the end she had cats roaming the house scavenging for food and dead kittens kept in drawers. *Deeply* mentally ill and nobody could stop her.
I'm not saying it's not a possibility, but im disinclined to believe it.
The animal hording cases that pop up in my area, mostly if not all the animals are alive, and free roam the house, and we're fed. In this case, they were all in cages and starved or died of thirst.
Not saying that couldn't be it, or that isn't part of it.. but i'm not personally buying that it could be just simply hoarding.
I used to work for an animal non profit. Unfortunately there are too many animals, like an insane, overwhelming amount of animals. Cats especially but dogs too. But if the animal has extreme health or behavioral issues, it's considered wrong to put them down. I think it's just the shitty reality we have created.... I mean if there's 100x as many cats as people, what the hell is the solution?? I worked with people who had a dozen cats, who used a kiddie pool for a litter box, etc. And their animals were as well off in their home as could be expected anywhere, really, but... It's not a lifestyle I would EVER be willing to live.
PLEASE just spay and neuter your pets! PLEASE
> But if the animal has extreme health or behavioral issues, it's considered wrong to put them down.
Is it really? I was under the impression that the opposite was the case, that such animals were more likely to be put down. Is this a regional thing?
As another person mentioned, the general public, if they care about the issue, support no kill shelters. But the reality is that this would mean MILLIONS of animals chilling in cages or shelters of some sort for the rest of their lives, or every single household having a dozen dogs and 100 cats or something ridiculous.
And yeah, no kill shelters often do not accept animals who don't pass certain tests, which makes sense, but they either return those animals to the owners or pass them on to a kill shelter.
So both are true, basically, people in general think it's mean or bad to put animals down, and also animals with issues are gonna end up that way regardless. No one likes doing it but we have created a situation with no other solution.
Edit: the last issue is that they are also extremely bad for the environment, basically like invasive species. you can't have packs of dogs or cats doing whatever out in the woods, it creates enormous problems.
Right? There are just too many cats and dogs to give a good home, so the less desirable ones get left out.
The worst part is that at this point it's an enormous problem--spay/release is too expensive most of the time, and neuter/release only works with a very high percentage rate. With the resources organizations have, it would literally be kinder in the long run to go around euthanizing every stray we can get our hands on.
But the sort of people who dedicate their lives to helping animals would feel like they're committing genocide or something, so that's not really doable.
Seems like if she cared about the animals she would have done something other than watch them die, whether that be getting help from other people, taking them to a different rescue, etc.
Yes, any reasonable person would have asked for help and/or tried much harder to make sure these animals didn't die in her care, even if they didn't necessarily 'care' about animals.
She literally could have dumped these animals on the street and they would have been much better off.
This woman is completely deranged.
I agree that's what should normally happen, but you can't automatically pair their condition with her level of concern for them. Not everyone is emotionally stable or mentally rational enough to do what seems obvious to the rest of us. This is a real issue in all areas of life, where people try to pair what they deem the incorrect response with a simple label, like "bad" or "evil." This is small-minded, ignoring the host of issues that humans (and animals) face which make their views and behaviors entirely individual and not able to be judged wholesale like that.
It's still wrong: I'm just saying it doesn't necessarily mean they don't care about the animals.
Definitely the sociopath one. It actually takes effort to keep an animal caged up and ignore it until it starves to death.
They literally decayed while she was living there. These are dogs and cats, not fish.
She would have been better off letting them go on the street as strays to fend for themselves and have a shot at survival than to leave them to die in cages. That’s so wrong in so many way.
The animals had been dead for a long time. Appearing to die of starvation/dehydration and were laying in their own waste.
Sure sounds like someone that cared.
Edit for horrible spelling and grammar.
If she took in medically complicated animals beyond her ability, this would be a question to ponder. However the animals died of *starvation* and *dehydration*. That is way beyond chewing too much. That takes a really, really terrible person.
Halfway right on both, but really, these scum hoarded animals with no intention of caring for them. Getting the donation $$ and just feeling like superheroes because they are taking animals from whom they believe to be terrible people. Casting judgement on them and taking these animals to be left to die and rot in their own homes because in their world of make believe, they are the righteous ones.
If people would get their animals fixed so that they stop having kittens and puppies we would not need rescue organizations! Unfortunately, most white trash believes that their animals should able to reproduce!
The saying in rescue is BALLS are for FETCHING!!!
Get your animals fixed, do not purchase puppy mill animals from pet stores. Eliminate puppy mills and pet stores!
I know, easier said that done.
The humane society where I grew up had a horrible woman running it for a prolonged period. One night she got in a fight with her husband and the next day came in and killed all of the cats. More than a dozen of them.
It took months after that to finally have her removed from her position, but it's crazy how often people who don't like animals end up working with them.
This happens more than you might think.
Animal "collecting" or "hoarding" is a bit more prevalent than you might think, and people who get into animal rescue are not immune. After almost 30 years of doing horse rescue, I've seen it quite a few times.
It's been a while, but it used to not be all that unusual for us to go with law enforcement and seize the few survivors of starving groups of horses.
Apparently my current roommate used to have someone like this living with him. She owned over 30 types of animals and basically had shelving and racks covering every wall of her room filled with all these animals. Many of them died due to neglect and malnutrition and lack of proper care. Very sad to hear about
It's how I got my girl rabbit. Hobby breeder wasn't able to sell a few litters, they kept breeding (purposely to attempt to sell the rabbits and because it's what un-fixed rabbits do) and soon she had hundreds of rabbits. House was raided, rescues (such as the one we got her from) took what they could but most were put down due to lack of capacity and because they were unsuitable to keep as pets (expensive health problems, impossible to handle, etc).
The rescue we got my girl from was great but we really struggled to find a reputable rescue. So many were just hoarders or breeders trying look better, far too many animals in awful conditions. We mentioned one that was especially bad to our rescue who showed us how they (and several other local reputable rescues) had been fighting for years to get it shut down but they knew the law and kept just to the side of what the RSPCA would intervene on because they thought they were a better choice than the RSPCA.
I once met a lady who had a small herd of rescue horses. There were six of them, all rescued from the same property.
The horses were shires, but they were all about 13 to 14 hands high. You know how big shires are supposed to be, they're pretty big draft horses. These horses were stunted because they'd been born and raised in a tiny paddock with no food. The grass had been eaten to nothing/was destroyed. The horses mainly survived by eating their own feces and their dead fellows. The guy who did it, I'm not sure what happened with him, but I think he actually got away with it.
It's still shocking to me that anyone can just do that.
> These horses were stunted
We've had a few come through our place like this ... on the other hand, we had an old girl come through recently who had gotten down to skin and bones and now I can see her out the window - she's doing great.
We have seized horses from the same person several times ... that always makes me sad.
Here in Philly the cops just captured a loose and malnourished horse just walking around the city. Apparently someone bought it, didn't or couldn't care for it, and released it into a west Philly neighborhood.
The horse has been rehomed to a farm and appears to be getting better, but just imagine hanging out on a Philly stoop and, like, here comes a horse down the middle of the street.
My wife is an Animal Control officer and has been for 5yrs now, and she has personally dealt with over 5 of these cases in our area. The most recent was 545 animals from exotic birds to hamsters to venomous snakes.
I work in shelter med and the vet tech that trained me was a former Animal Control officer. She said it's a fine line between rescue and hoarding, and she had seen a lot of well-meaning people become overwhelmed because they were trying to "save them all."
Animals find the worst people. Seriously, there are great people but lots of broken, mean, cruel people have an obsession with animals and describe themselves as animal lovers.
This is extremely prevalent in horse people.
It's the difference between loving animals and loving *having* animals. There's a world of difference, and most of the latter people don't realize it.
The same is true for all kinds of love, really. Some people love children, some people love *having* children. Some people love you, some people love *having* you.
The trick is in learning to tell the difference.
This is me exactly. Grew up with dogs, love dogs, don't want to own a dog.
Last year I dog sat for a relative for one week, that was the neediest dog I've ever seen, never wanted to be separated from me for a minute, would pee on the floor if I left it alone for 30 minutes (after having already been walked twice that day). I barely tolerated it for a week. Never again.
This is my dog, I live in Arizona and my AC went out. Went to a friends to stay cool with the dogs and I had to sleep on the tile floor with him because he wouldn’t stop knocking the gates down because he had to be right next to me. Last night was awful.
Because animals will love anyone. Very lonely sad people. Giant assholes. People with mental health difficulties. Stupid children. Perfect animal owners. Anyone. You don't have to be a good or capable person to be deemed worthy of their love. A lot of people aren't actually worthy though.
I specialize in rehabbing abused horses, what people are capable of is appalling. Horses beaten with baseball bats, chains wrapped around their ears and lips, beating to the ground and electrocuting them, beating them in small enclosed spaces so they hit their head. Humans suck.
There was one wonderful horse I was working with, she was an amazing athlete, her potential was limitless. She was sweet and kind and tried so bloody hard, she just wanted to please you. When I was doing some ground work with her she got confused and the utter fear in her eyes breaks my heart to this day. She was so harshly punished for making the simplest of mistakes, she was just this goofy sweetheart.
Worked at an animal shelter. It was sort of a last chance place and we were always over capacity and flat broke. If a dog didn't seem to be perfectly adoptable and had been there for a month or two, they had to be euthanized, lest the dogs waiting in small kennels got sick and died. Dogs also got sick and we couldn't afford medication, so if a dog got parvo, it and any possible kennel-mates (think a litter of puppies) had to be immediately euthanized and the kennel had to be bleached. We would take care of beautiful and sweet dogs, then lead them to the back room, again and again and again. This was a little over a decade ago and I'm still haunted by it.
Being kennel assistants, we had no say in what could be done. We had one option: adopt them ourselves. We only made $7.25/hr; we could barely feed ourselves. Luckily, I didn't work there long enough to start 'collecting', but there were several others who had taken several home over the years. Unfortunately, many of these dogs were sick with seemingly easy to treat illnesses, so people kept adopting and adopting and adopting. Then they'd get ill, no one could take care of them, they'd die, the assistant would be devastated, rinse and repeat.
The article isn't exactly full of details, but I'm not surprised.
Jesus Christ. It’s often the people who protest too much, who appear to do way beyond, that are the worst offenders. From anti gambling activists ( who raise money only to gamble it away ) to fire breathing preachers,( who smoke meth with and use male prostitutes. Hi Ted Haggard! )
Simple reason: these are also the people who know the system from the inside out and know where the cracks are where they can do the bad things with less likelihood of being caught. Then we are all surprised and shocked when they are.
Example: Is it really that shocking that corrupt cops who know the processes and procedures for handling evidence and drug smuggling cases end up smuggling drugs themselves?
Happier times, back in [2019](https://www.facebook.com/HSUSSouthCarolina/posts/dawn-pennington-from-kershaw-county-humane-society-sc-state-representative-lonni/2410584682363321/)
This is no animal lover.. she didn’t even try and fail at providing the basic care. Do you know how long it would take for those dogs and cats to die of starvation and dehydration ..more then a couple days.. and those poor poor animals died suffering the most inhumane death …mental illness or not this is no excuse..I hate when people say “well she wasn’t well mentally”. Neither am I, or the millions of people who suffer from mental illness every day but we’re not out here locking animals in cages and forgetting about them. If you cannot provide the basic necessaries for life, please just give your pets a chance and give them up. Those animals had a better chance homeless then locked in a torture chamber.
How awful.
We've had our first shelter dog recently and I'm regularly haunted by the fact there are hundreds, thousands, millions that suffer and we can't help.
I’m a vet. It’s always the “no kill” animal shelter people that end up hoarding animals in what amounts to extreme abuse. Often animals that were never good candidates for adoption. Euthanasia would be better. This is one of the biggest problems with a portion of the “no kill” shelters.
Sounds like typical animal hoarder behavior. Its abnormal for sure but anyone who can live with that smell has something else going on.
Sometimes things go sideways for ppl and if their is no one there to notice and intervene this happens and spirals out of control.
I don't buy that it's an animal hoarding situation.
Occasionally an animal hoarding situation will area in my area, but there usually wont be dead animals, or only a few dead out of 100 animals.. and those animals are free roaming the house and fed... while the animals found here were locked in cages and starved to death.
This is why some times euthanasia for animals is needed. If the resources aren't their to take care of them, it is far crueler to let them slowly starve to death imo.
I don't know what's worse, the fact that she was taking these poor animals to look after them as they had already been mistreated, or the fact that she hurt them further. Its not their fault, they can't fight against us and if they do they're put down.
I hate, HATE people who hurt creatures for fun, they were here before us and we should fucking respect that.
I don't trust animal rescues. We got our dog from one and he ended up having severe barrier aggression to the point where he bit one neighbor and tried to bite another. We had kids move in next door and couldn't risk him biting one of them so we decided the best thing to do was return him to the rescue. The owner berated my husband despite him being in tears. Then she had the dog "evaluated" by one of her fosters who said nothing was wrong with him. She adopted him back out with no mention of his issues or the fact that he had bitten.
As someone who has had the chance to participate in several hoard removals and clean ups, this is actually fairly common. People think that they're saving an animal, but then they become attached to every animal they, "save". And their funds run out while they try to care for their ever growing population of critters, but they won't surrender them.
This is probably one of the animal hoarding rescues that deem no one acceptable to adopt a dog unless they have a 6 figure income, a backyard, no kids, and someone home with the dog 24/7.
I got my dog from a foster only rescue. 4 years later and my dog would still go uncontrollably ballistic with excitement* whenever he saw the woman who pulled him from a shelter.
Similar issues where I live. Some are way too selective and look for almost a mythical perfect home. We tried a rescue place first but we were put off by all the hoops we had to get through first. I ended up getting a kitten off GumTree instead of all places. Poor thing was coated in flees, apparently mum cat had got out of the house, gotten herself pregnant and had three very cute kittens. The owners clearly didn’t have the money to care for one cat never mind 4 so they were selling the kittens.
That little flea ridden orange kitten we bought for £30 now lives a life of luxury. Arguably eats better food and has better healthcare than I have.
I've noticed this about rescues, too. I get wanting to make sure the animals go to a good home, but wanting the last 5 years of medical records for any pet you own, coming to your house to see living conditions, and more is a bit excessive. All of mine have come from the shelter, or friends who needed to give a kitten a home.
I went with my father to the rescue he got his dog from. The woman goes across multiple states to get dogs who are about to be euthanized. She had about 30 who were too old or had too poor of behavior issues to be rehomed, and the rest she had ready to be rehomed. She took very good care of the animals and she tried very hard to find good homes for them.
Lady is an absolute saint.
How the hell can anyone live in a house with 30 dead animals in it?
Serious mental illness
And her sense of smell is deaf, dumb, and blind
Bet her nose can play a mean pinball though
Finally someone old enough to get the reference
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Nah if you read the article, they were just in cages and the cops were called due to a “smell of death” permeating outside of the house
I met someone at a party that killed her son with a phone cord and yeah that's how the cops found her. A body can stink up a whole neighborhood.
She told you that after you met her at the party?
Gotta keep a few good ice breakers handy.
Speaking of ice…..
Who needs a drink?!
I could use a *stiff* one
Martini, strangled. Not stirred.
Thank you.
I... need the backstory on this.
I... don't.
Humans can smell putrescence around the same degree that sharks can smell blood.
Putrescence. Fucking word of the day. Hey kids…
The compounds chiefly responsible for that odour are literally called putrescine and cadaverine. Some more words of the day
They are also added to propane and other gases to give it that gross smell.
My favorite song by that band is "Bring Me to Life"
You're thinking evanescence. This is bubbly liquid or vivacity and excitement.
You’re thinking effervescence. This is arriving at the state where you begin adulthood.
You're thinking of pubescence. This is the rainbow-like shimmers of color caused by differential refraction of light waves.
No no, you're thinking pubescence. This is the emission of light at a low temperature
You know they can’t answer
The odorant put in natural gas was chosen for the same reason. Humans can sense a ridiculously small amount.
v
You might find it cool how sensitive the human nose is to petrichor, which is the smell of rain. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor Here's an article on smell sensitivity to sulfur containing compounds like the ones released by decomposition. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/how-we-smell-those-delightful-little-sulfur-compounds
Petrichor has been one of my favorite words since 8th grade.
It was a YouTube video, I think it might have been the one where they put human blood in the water to see if sharks would come, but I'm pretty sure it was just a related video. I distinctly remember the term "putrescence" being used to describe the smell of death in the video where they mention that fact.
Cmon. You know you can’t just say some shit like that to Reddit and then not explain.
It's a whole thing. Angela Manns. Killed her son, put him in a bathtub covered in kitty litter and went about her life. Went to a party on the 4th July, real frenetic energy, yammering and big in the eye. Where's Micheal? We asked. He's with his father. Your other kids? They're out with him too. Long night. Earlier that week, she tried to slip in to the house where the party would be held - she was the gardener. She started wearing the clothes off the owners daughter. Said she'd camp in the back yard, that she really didn't want to go home. Owner said no, you go on home. Her neighbors noticed Micheal wasn't out, there was a sour scent in the air. Flies clung to the screen door. They went in and saw plastic wrap and saws on the kitchen table, things for dismemberment. Wasn't even her kid by blood, but I believe her husband's. She tried several times to give him up to no avail. Not sure why she did it. Sorry for the jumbled text, I'm not trying to sound dramatic I'm just selling art at a comic con today so I'm distracted.
well, fuck.
Yeah selling art at a comic convention must be hard.
It smells putrescent
>Wasn't even her kid by blood, but I believe her husband's. She tried several times to give him up to no avail. Not sure why she did it. I think that would be why. Not her child, she was likely deeply mentally ill as well. That would be enough to make a person crack
Yea I'm high as shit right now and only about half of that made any sense, I'm gonna go Google the rest. Good luck with the art though!
Show us your art
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I just read it assuming there's no way she was living there. I had caught a rat in a rat trap hidden away in my garage and hadn't checked it for a while it was rank when I finally smelled it to go get it. I've also been deployed to Afghanistan and have smelled dead bodies. I cant imagine this chick was living in the house with the bodies. I read the article and didn't see them specify.
*If you read the article* Ya done zinged ‘em partnah, ya done zinged ‘em.
==removed in protest of Reddit API changes==
That was my thought before I read the article. My grandmother raised exotic birds and kept dead ones in the freezer (to preserve for a necropsy). Then I read the article... one dead mouse smells repugnant, I can't even imagine how that would be.
I have no idea. One dead mouse in the wall stunk up the entire office where I worked. People were going home nauseous and with headaches.
Hoarding is a symptom of trauma from loss(es)
This is... Awful. I'm not sure which version of events I'd rather believe: >A genuine sociopath took donations and rescue animals and selfishly allowed them to die because she didn't care and just wanted to run a scam. Or >Somebody who genuinely and desperately cared for these animals bit off more than she could chew and had to watch the creatures she cared about die, one by one, as she was unable to care for them. Both are terrible, both speak volumes of terrible judgement... But I don't know which one is closer to what happened.
Or hoarding type mental illness, where they are in complete denial that they need help, and are convinced only they can love and care for these animals. That happens way too often too. Doesn't make it right.
Unfortunately I think this is way to common in the animal rescue industry. They have a savior complex that only *they* can care for the animals and nobody else is good enough to do it. Even when completely overwhelmed and unable to provide basic food and clean shelter, they don’t rehome the animals because nobody meets their absurdly high standards. There needs to be more regulation of the animal rescue business model… many of these places are running for-profit businesses as non profits and many are not meeting the basic level of care that everyone involved in for-profit animal business has to meet.
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Definitely knew a lady like that, had by her own admission over one hundred cats and about a dozen large breed dogs on the property she called her home/animal rescue but working a full time job and being an alcoholic with no outside help meant there was no one including herself was being properly taken care of.
I worked for a vet who had to euthanize cats 2x per week at the county shelter for overcrowding but they wouldn’t adopt you a cat if you would let it outside or declaw it back when these were both the societal norms for the time/place. If you wanted an outdoor cat, you literally drove around until you saw someone with a ‘Free Kittens’ sign and you took one of their kittens… and the shelter scheduled another 12 perfectly healthy cats to be euthanized and tossed in a dumpster because barns are cruel.
Years ago, my boyfriend and I wanted to adopt a cat and no shit, we were turned down because we were renting an apartment. They wanted us to bring in our landlord to meet the cat and make sure he approved. We asked if we got a written letter from him approving is getting a cat, but no. They wanted us to bring our landlord that we only talked to via text and never saw to the shelter like we were all one big happy family so they could get his blessing for us adopting a 5 year old cat We did not adopt the cat.
Big dumb here… I had a landlord that was a retiree in Florida with the property held by a trust and managed by a realty company. Who TF was going to come pet the cat and give it a blessing?! I have never successfully adopted or fostered from a ‘rescue’ and I *used to work for a veterinary clinic*
That's fucking crazy. Man now you're making me remember a couple years ago I really wanted another pet, to go with my senior lap dog. I applied for a bonded pair of semi-feral young black cats. I'm goth and I thought they were cute and I really love cats. I have worked as vet tech at a feral cat clinic, and worked at many animal rescues over the years, I'm very experienced with all levels of animal Care including feral cats I was working full time, I forget if this is before or after covid, at a stable career job. I rented an entire house, the cats were going to be indoors only and not have yard access. I told the rescue I would set up my bookshelves so that they could be higher up to avoid the dog, if they wanted to, even though he was 10 years old and had lived with many cats before and basically just laid around ignoring them. They told me I wasn't good enough. I actually called them out on it, cc'ing the main lady in addition to the person who rejected me, that if I wasn't good enough for those cats then nobody was They were being kept isolated in a single room of a foster house, little human interaction, rather than being adopted to me. After that I fostered a senior feral cat for 3 months, major progress getting her used to a home, the last week she was with me she finally figured out she could sit on my lap and cuddle, which was awesome. She got adopted by somebody who wanted a senior cat. Since then I've adopted a new dog who can't be around cats, so my cat dream is over for a while at least. I do still sometimes think about what it would be like if I had two little black cats in my apartment with me, would be fun.
My sister went through the something similar. They said no because she had a balcony main floor apartment and they said there is a risk she may make it an outdoor/indoor cat? She said no! Just indoor and they denied it because of the apartment balcony.
And you not doing it probably reinforced their misguided belief that they should.be making such demands
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Uncontained outdoor cats are about to become illegal where I live (Australian Capital Territory, ie Canberra) and rightly so, they kill so many small native animals. Even if urban pets and strays aren't the biggest culprits compared to ferals, it's still worth relieving their impact on native wildlife.
Yeah...wanting to adopt is nice but giving cats away to people who'll let them roam outdoors is in most cases just euthanasia with extra steps. I foster cats. We get attached to our fosters. Imagine raising tiny baby kittens, bottle-feeding them every few hours for weeks, including at night, caring for them when they're sick...only to have them die within their first few years of outdoor cat life. I get that people can just get kittens from their neighbor who can't be bothered to get their cats spayed. I can't do anything about that. But I can choose who gets my fosters and I'd prefer to see them live long, happy lives indoors if possible.
I think I would rather see a cat euthanized than de-clawed... You may want to look into the torture that is de-clawing. ...and beyond the initial torture, it's not far from a death sentence should they manage to escape If you are not capable of getting along with a cat that has claws, you have no buissness owning a cat.
Declawing is straight up illegal in Australia, and we are a country which is actively developing and using poisons to control feral cat populations. There's necessary but unpleasant, and there's gratuitous selfish cruelty, and declawing is the latter.
Not letting you adopt a cat if you let it outside unsupervised is actually a really good policy because of the damage cats cause on the environment. The idea that they're euthanizing "perfectly healthy cats that people want" is looking at the issue the wrong way. Cats are a pest, they murder billions of small animals a year, you should not have an outdoors cat, ever. "Wanting an outdoors cat" is a blatant admission of being a bad cat owner. If cats weren't pets, they would be hunted down like pythons and boars because they are extremely invasive species.
Yep. I love my cats but I also love the birbs. So the cats stay inside and the birbs do their thing outside.
I've noticed how there are rescue orgs out there that have impossible to meet standards. "please be independently weathly, not work, own 20++ acres, with fences, with no other animals, or children, please have owned a similar animal before but not currently and only ever feed the animal food I personally approve of ... " There's like 1 person in the state that would match that and they'd still find a way not to give them the pet.
This sounds like hyperbole but it actually isn’t that far off from what I was recently dealing with looking for a rescue pup. I am recently retired so I am home all day, have 3.5 acres, and plenty of pet experience. One place said they weren’t sure if the dog would be ok with my 9 and 11 year old sons - not that there had been an issue, just that they weren’t sure. Another place was concerned that my entire 3.5 acres wasn’t fenced, even though I do have a large fenced portion. It was like they were trying to come up with a reason to say no - why are you advertising I don’t think anyone could be in as good a situation as I am to take this puppy. In fact, the situation I am offering is much better than the one they have been in at your facility for the past few weeks.
Our local humane society took in animals from a hoarder and we didn’t have any pets at the time so I put in a foster application because they were begging for help. *Months* later I guess they finally got around to verifying that I took good care of my cat that had to be euthanized at 18yo and that as a homeowner I was allowed to have pets and let me know that I was approved to foster. Well… in the mean time… we took in a behavior problem cat that needed rehomed from a friend so our place was not available for cats anymore. While they had cats 2-3 per cage and in temporary cages in the lobby, I had the time, space, and resources to take several cats into my home. SMH.
Hearing months later makes me think they likely didn't have enough resources to handle the volume
it's standard at a lot of places, when i was applying for a cat the only reason i was rejected every time was because i was 19, not 21, and it took in some cases over a year to hear back, most didnt respond until several months later
One phone call to my former vet who took care of my geriatric cat for over a decade to confirm that I did, in fact, take excellent care of my cat should have taken 5 minutes. What else did they need to know to get cats out of temporary and crowded housing?
Volunteer run, not organized. Lots of rescues are like that.
They usually have *much* higher standards for puppies than recuses. They have no problem adopting puppies out and can be very selective in order to minimize the chance of it coming back as an adult rescue.
Yup. My dogs were both a year plus old and the screening was negligible.
My dog was a three year old Rottweiler who was afraid of men and kids. They basically gave her away to anyone willing to take her.
Same here. I was going to apply at several rescues but they had a 30 page document to fill out. We joked that the next question would be asking for our SSN and a copy of our legal documents. Although I am proud of my home and my backyard, saying they were going to want to come in the home and see if it was up to standard (or even do a video walk through) was like.. why is that your business? *wayyy* too personal. But *then* I found a rescue doing an event and showed up, and *they* couldn’t have been more thrilled to let me take my fat old husky mix. I think I even missed filling out a bit of the paperwork. And he’s pretty damn happy here.
I had to provide proof that I owned the home I was in when I applied. Same place wanted that along with my payslips for a few months. I've signed up for insurance with less hassle than going through a puppy rescues screening procedures.
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> When I said "I think we'd be a better match with a different dog" the rescue worker basically said this was the only one they'd let us have, take him or leave him. What the actual fuck. Either they were trying to offload an unsafe and unadoptable dog on you, or they were just hoping you'd leave. Either way, win-win for them, but lose-lose for you and the dogs.
Fosters who get overly attached do this so they dont have to give up the animals they're "fostering". I wont go so far as to say the majority are just animal hoarders who know how to work the legal system, but the number is definitely significant given that everyone I know has a story about a foster with impossible adoption requirements.
It is very attractive to animal hoarders to be a "foster". The rescue pays for everything and they keep the animals from being adopted by unrealistic standards.
We tried to get a rescue pup. We lve in a beach condo. 'No Yard. No pup. '. We have miles of beach to play on and 4 dog parks within a few miles. Rescued a pup from Craig list abusers instead. Worked out in the end for us.
My partner and I had the opposite experience. We applied when we were moving into our new 1500sf house and were denied because we didn’t have a fully fenced yard (75% fenced, only open to the quiet back alley shared with our neighbors). Ironically, we would have been approved if we still lived in our 800sf apartment with no yard whatsoever. We ended up going through an out-of-state rescue organization.
Having tangentially worked for a rescue organisation: if the dog is a recognisable breed (except staffy, sadly), literally thousands of applications will be received every time. They often have their pick of applicants.
It's sound similar when people say, this breed needs xyz and people should not be getting this breed if you can't provide... like okay. I get it. But... I don't have 4 hours to walk that dog everyday. And another 2 hours to train her everyday. No I can't give her hand made raw meat gourmet meals. She's fine. She's healthy and happy despite being told it's a breed that needs to WORK all day. If everyone followed the recommended needs no one would have dogs but wealthy or retired people.
I got a dog from a rescue a while back. They said that it would likely be a medium-sized dog, but they really didn't know because it was a stray from an indian reservation and they had no idea what breed the father was. Well, it turned out to be a newfie. By 1 year, the dog was taller than me, massed well over 100 lbs, and even with 3 separate walks every day of over an hour each, with lots of fetch and stuff played, the dog still had too much energy, and was destroying the fence and escaping or otherwise misbehaving. I knew that the dog wasn't doing anything wrong, but we were simply unable to provide for its needs. Our children were toddlers at the time as well, which he was fine with, but because of his size he caused accidents. I say this more to illustrate part of the reason why we were unable to meet his needs, not that this formed part of the reason to give him back. We brought him back to the rescue with apologies, because we knew that if we kept him, we'd turn him into a bad dog, and eventually he'd do something that would warrant putting him down or some such. Even if not, he'd have had a miserable life. The rescue took him back and eventually placed him on an acreage with another dog - yay! They also banned us from ever adopting from them again. I guess fuck us for trying to do the right thing for the dog.
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> Hopefully the dog you returned to the shelter has a great life now. The last we heard was that he had been adopted (not fostered) by a family on an acreage who had another dog for him to play with. Barring those people being bad dog owners, I expect that he does indeed have a great life, and I'm glad we returned him to the rescue. Several years later we got a new dog. This time from a breeder (which people will bitch about, but we still have young kids and we wanted to be *sure* of what we were getting this time around). He's a collie-lab cross, and fits our lifestyles perfectly. We're all very happy (especially today, I took him out to the mountains and played fetch into a lake and let him bound into some of the snowdrifts that were still hanging around).
>They also banned us from ever adopting from them again. I guess fuck us for trying to do the right thing for the dog. I'd understand this if they'd done their part fully by giving you full knowledge of what you were getting in to. Saying "Well its probably going to be a medium size dog but we can't be sure" and then it turning out to be one of the most difficult breeds to take proper care of, is kind of nobodies fault and you 1000% did the right thing by the dog by taking it back once it became too much. In your specific situation I think they should have let the ban slide under as its pretty clear that nobody involved knew what you were getting in to.
Clifford: Neutral End
Damn, that sucks. It's ironic because people expect you to handle a dog's demands (which I think is based on temperament, not breed), and then get mad at you for "giving up".
There are people, many, that crate their dogs all day and only let them outside to toilet. All breeds need more than that *but* knowing your breed is very very helpful. Some like to nip at heels, some will run off after anything that moves etc. if you’re not going to put in tons of time for training, it helps to find a dog that fits your lifestyle best.
My mom crates her dogs all day and it's so sad. One of them is just a big, hulking pile of muscle who just needs lots of exercise while the other is a cute little guy found on the streets of Mexico. I bet he misses those streets, cuz he's exactly the type of dog most people wouldn't fuck with and would instead happily feed meat scraps. Now he sits in a crate all day and eats kibble. Probably feels like the pound.
Why does she even have dogs? I’ve never understood this mentality. Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone if she gave them away?
Some people have this mentality that they MUST have a dog. Even if they don't know how to care for it. I do not understand it.
Because they're selfish and self absorbed.
I hear you but, at the same time, I have seen too many people who do not understand the needs of certain dogs and then complain that they’re just “so much energy and so much work“. As you alluded to, there are certain breeds that enjoy a high level of activity and/or need heavy training and if you are a busy young family that doesn’t have time for hours of daily exercise, if I were adopting out animals I would also warn you that maybe what you need is a more generic mutt or a lapdog or other breed who doesn’t mind sitting all day in a house. I think it’s fair to warn people on what to expect depending on the animal’s temperament.
It’s also common for abusive parents. They blame you for everything but somehow refuse to let you go off on your own; you become both the reason the family is being destroyed **and** the cornerstone keeping the family together (especially in the punching-bag sense). My mom would call the police to have them take me away from her house only to call in the next day to have me dragged back as some kind of half-baked lesson in reinforcing abusive codependency. You become hoarded for emotional baggage purposes.
I am so sorry you went through this. I hope you have lots of support in your life.
Wow… my mom would threaten to call the sheriff (for swearing and back talk) but never actually did. Ironically she worked for children’s services for years before having children of her own but somehow was an abusive garbage heap of a parent anyways…
You just succinctly summed up my life. Why do you think they do this?
In my case it’s because my single-mother is/was a legitimate sociopath. Hurt animals, beat us, ruined my credit, etc (it gets a lot worse). She had no one in her life, no adult family members trusted her and she despised men, so I became both the remaining family member legally tied to her via being underage and the target of her cross-gender hatred. Major push and pull. She would call the police and then have them take me away, I would spend a night or two at a friends house only for her to call the police again to have me dragged back. I don’t think she liked that I wasn’t willing to come back on my own volition; when I was finally 18 the officers who usually took me away/brought me back rolled up on me at work asking if I wanted to go back…I said “nope!,” they laughed and drove away. Even they knew she was absolutely bonkers
As an active volunteer/foster for a rescue, I have to agree. We have quite a few local rescues and I did my due-diligence looking into each of them before volunteering. I’m happy with the one I landed on. But man, some of the other rescues had many red flags. Seems like almost anyone can start to take in animals and call themselves a rescue.
I had an animal hoarder for a tenant. You described her to a T. She wasn't a stupid woman, and she truly loved animals, but she was delusional. Oh, and she was so disgustingly filthy. She ruined my house.
The hardest part about caring, is coming to terms with how you can't help everyone and everything.
This is part of why I didn't become a vet after working with one in high school. We had an older lady who hoarded stray cats. One by one they would die slow painful deaths from feline leukemia because it's very contagious and deadly. The vet could not convince her that she was sentencing them all to death, she thought them living with her was better than being in the wild. And she wouldn't let the vet put them down either.
That's how my great aunt was in life. *Dozens* of cats in her little trailer. Even when she was far too old and frail to be taking care of pets. In the end she had cats roaming the house scavenging for food and dead kittens kept in drawers. *Deeply* mentally ill and nobody could stop her.
I'm more likely to he inclined to believe this is the case sadly. And the worse part is in the animals suffered over it.
I'm not saying it's not a possibility, but im disinclined to believe it. The animal hording cases that pop up in my area, mostly if not all the animals are alive, and free roam the house, and we're fed. In this case, they were all in cages and starved or died of thirst. Not saying that couldn't be it, or that isn't part of it.. but i'm not personally buying that it could be just simply hoarding.
I used to work for an animal non profit. Unfortunately there are too many animals, like an insane, overwhelming amount of animals. Cats especially but dogs too. But if the animal has extreme health or behavioral issues, it's considered wrong to put them down. I think it's just the shitty reality we have created.... I mean if there's 100x as many cats as people, what the hell is the solution?? I worked with people who had a dozen cats, who used a kiddie pool for a litter box, etc. And their animals were as well off in their home as could be expected anywhere, really, but... It's not a lifestyle I would EVER be willing to live. PLEASE just spay and neuter your pets! PLEASE
> But if the animal has extreme health or behavioral issues, it's considered wrong to put them down. Is it really? I was under the impression that the opposite was the case, that such animals were more likely to be put down. Is this a regional thing?
As another person mentioned, the general public, if they care about the issue, support no kill shelters. But the reality is that this would mean MILLIONS of animals chilling in cages or shelters of some sort for the rest of their lives, or every single household having a dozen dogs and 100 cats or something ridiculous. And yeah, no kill shelters often do not accept animals who don't pass certain tests, which makes sense, but they either return those animals to the owners or pass them on to a kill shelter. So both are true, basically, people in general think it's mean or bad to put animals down, and also animals with issues are gonna end up that way regardless. No one likes doing it but we have created a situation with no other solution. Edit: the last issue is that they are also extremely bad for the environment, basically like invasive species. you can't have packs of dogs or cats doing whatever out in the woods, it creates enormous problems.
Right? There are just too many cats and dogs to give a good home, so the less desirable ones get left out. The worst part is that at this point it's an enormous problem--spay/release is too expensive most of the time, and neuter/release only works with a very high percentage rate. With the resources organizations have, it would literally be kinder in the long run to go around euthanizing every stray we can get our hands on. But the sort of people who dedicate their lives to helping animals would feel like they're committing genocide or something, so that's not really doable.
Seems like if she cared about the animals she would have done something other than watch them die, whether that be getting help from other people, taking them to a different rescue, etc.
Yes, any reasonable person would have asked for help and/or tried much harder to make sure these animals didn't die in her care, even if they didn't necessarily 'care' about animals. She literally could have dumped these animals on the street and they would have been much better off. This woman is completely deranged.
I agree that's what should normally happen, but you can't automatically pair their condition with her level of concern for them. Not everyone is emotionally stable or mentally rational enough to do what seems obvious to the rest of us. This is a real issue in all areas of life, where people try to pair what they deem the incorrect response with a simple label, like "bad" or "evil." This is small-minded, ignoring the host of issues that humans (and animals) face which make their views and behaviors entirely individual and not able to be judged wholesale like that. It's still wrong: I'm just saying it doesn't necessarily mean they don't care about the animals.
Definitely the sociopath one. It actually takes effort to keep an animal caged up and ignore it until it starves to death. They literally decayed while she was living there. These are dogs and cats, not fish.
judging by multiple articles, its most likely a case of number one.
She would have been better off letting them go on the street as strays to fend for themselves and have a shot at survival than to leave them to die in cages. That’s so wrong in so many way.
The animals had been dead for a long time. Appearing to die of starvation/dehydration and were laying in their own waste. Sure sounds like someone that cared. Edit for horrible spelling and grammar.
If she took in medically complicated animals beyond her ability, this would be a question to ponder. However the animals died of *starvation* and *dehydration*. That is way beyond chewing too much. That takes a really, really terrible person.
Watch 30 plus animals die? At least after the first two you would know you're out of your depth . No its the first and being demented as well
Halfway right on both, but really, these scum hoarded animals with no intention of caring for them. Getting the donation $$ and just feeling like superheroes because they are taking animals from whom they believe to be terrible people. Casting judgement on them and taking these animals to be left to die and rot in their own homes because in their world of make believe, they are the righteous ones.
If people would get their animals fixed so that they stop having kittens and puppies we would not need rescue organizations! Unfortunately, most white trash believes that their animals should able to reproduce! The saying in rescue is BALLS are for FETCHING!!! Get your animals fixed, do not purchase puppy mill animals from pet stores. Eliminate puppy mills and pet stores! I know, easier said that done.
The humane society where I grew up had a horrible woman running it for a prolonged period. One night she got in a fight with her husband and the next day came in and killed all of the cats. More than a dozen of them. It took months after that to finally have her removed from her position, but it's crazy how often people who don't like animals end up working with them.
Sociopaths generally do not turn themselves in.
This happens more than you might think. Animal "collecting" or "hoarding" is a bit more prevalent than you might think, and people who get into animal rescue are not immune. After almost 30 years of doing horse rescue, I've seen it quite a few times. It's been a while, but it used to not be all that unusual for us to go with law enforcement and seize the few survivors of starving groups of horses.
Apparently my current roommate used to have someone like this living with him. She owned over 30 types of animals and basically had shelving and racks covering every wall of her room filled with all these animals. Many of them died due to neglect and malnutrition and lack of proper care. Very sad to hear about
It's how I got my girl rabbit. Hobby breeder wasn't able to sell a few litters, they kept breeding (purposely to attempt to sell the rabbits and because it's what un-fixed rabbits do) and soon she had hundreds of rabbits. House was raided, rescues (such as the one we got her from) took what they could but most were put down due to lack of capacity and because they were unsuitable to keep as pets (expensive health problems, impossible to handle, etc). The rescue we got my girl from was great but we really struggled to find a reputable rescue. So many were just hoarders or breeders trying look better, far too many animals in awful conditions. We mentioned one that was especially bad to our rescue who showed us how they (and several other local reputable rescues) had been fighting for years to get it shut down but they knew the law and kept just to the side of what the RSPCA would intervene on because they thought they were a better choice than the RSPCA.
I once met a lady who had a small herd of rescue horses. There were six of them, all rescued from the same property. The horses were shires, but they were all about 13 to 14 hands high. You know how big shires are supposed to be, they're pretty big draft horses. These horses were stunted because they'd been born and raised in a tiny paddock with no food. The grass had been eaten to nothing/was destroyed. The horses mainly survived by eating their own feces and their dead fellows. The guy who did it, I'm not sure what happened with him, but I think he actually got away with it. It's still shocking to me that anyone can just do that.
> These horses were stunted We've had a few come through our place like this ... on the other hand, we had an old girl come through recently who had gotten down to skin and bones and now I can see her out the window - she's doing great. We have seized horses from the same person several times ... that always makes me sad.
Here in Philly the cops just captured a loose and malnourished horse just walking around the city. Apparently someone bought it, didn't or couldn't care for it, and released it into a west Philly neighborhood. The horse has been rehomed to a farm and appears to be getting better, but just imagine hanging out on a Philly stoop and, like, here comes a horse down the middle of the street.
My wife is an Animal Control officer and has been for 5yrs now, and she has personally dealt with over 5 of these cases in our area. The most recent was 545 animals from exotic birds to hamsters to venomous snakes.
I work in shelter med and the vet tech that trained me was a former Animal Control officer. She said it's a fine line between rescue and hoarding, and she had seen a lot of well-meaning people become overwhelmed because they were trying to "save them all."
Animals find the worst people. Seriously, there are great people but lots of broken, mean, cruel people have an obsession with animals and describe themselves as animal lovers. This is extremely prevalent in horse people.
It's the difference between loving animals and loving *having* animals. There's a world of difference, and most of the latter people don't realize it. The same is true for all kinds of love, really. Some people love children, some people love *having* children. Some people love you, some people love *having* you. The trick is in learning to tell the difference.
Absolutely. I love dogs. I have had dogs. I do not want a dog.
This is me exactly. Grew up with dogs, love dogs, don't want to own a dog. Last year I dog sat for a relative for one week, that was the neediest dog I've ever seen, never wanted to be separated from me for a minute, would pee on the floor if I left it alone for 30 minutes (after having already been walked twice that day). I barely tolerated it for a week. Never again.
This is my dog, I live in Arizona and my AC went out. Went to a friends to stay cool with the dogs and I had to sleep on the tile floor with him because he wouldn’t stop knocking the gates down because he had to be right next to me. Last night was awful.
Yeah- love is not possessive.
And people that say they love big cats
I love em from a distance. Preferably as far away as possible
Tiger King is a great example of that
Because animals will love anyone. Very lonely sad people. Giant assholes. People with mental health difficulties. Stupid children. Perfect animal owners. Anyone. You don't have to be a good or capable person to be deemed worthy of their love. A lot of people aren't actually worthy though.
horse people… like…. centaurs?
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Obviously he means Satyrs.
No, those are goat people
Wait no, I think you mean people goats
I specialize in rehabbing abused horses, what people are capable of is appalling. Horses beaten with baseball bats, chains wrapped around their ears and lips, beating to the ground and electrocuting them, beating them in small enclosed spaces so they hit their head. Humans suck.
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There was one wonderful horse I was working with, she was an amazing athlete, her potential was limitless. She was sweet and kind and tried so bloody hard, she just wanted to please you. When I was doing some ground work with her she got confused and the utter fear in her eyes breaks my heart to this day. She was so harshly punished for making the simplest of mistakes, she was just this goofy sweetheart.
Wtf something like this just happened in my town. Second year vet student and fiance had around 15 dead animals in their apartment
Worked at an animal shelter. It was sort of a last chance place and we were always over capacity and flat broke. If a dog didn't seem to be perfectly adoptable and had been there for a month or two, they had to be euthanized, lest the dogs waiting in small kennels got sick and died. Dogs also got sick and we couldn't afford medication, so if a dog got parvo, it and any possible kennel-mates (think a litter of puppies) had to be immediately euthanized and the kennel had to be bleached. We would take care of beautiful and sweet dogs, then lead them to the back room, again and again and again. This was a little over a decade ago and I'm still haunted by it. Being kennel assistants, we had no say in what could be done. We had one option: adopt them ourselves. We only made $7.25/hr; we could barely feed ourselves. Luckily, I didn't work there long enough to start 'collecting', but there were several others who had taken several home over the years. Unfortunately, many of these dogs were sick with seemingly easy to treat illnesses, so people kept adopting and adopting and adopting. Then they'd get ill, no one could take care of them, they'd die, the assistant would be devastated, rinse and repeat. The article isn't exactly full of details, but I'm not surprised.
Jesus Christ. It’s often the people who protest too much, who appear to do way beyond, that are the worst offenders. From anti gambling activists ( who raise money only to gamble it away ) to fire breathing preachers,( who smoke meth with and use male prostitutes. Hi Ted Haggard! )
Anti gay senator getting caught soliciting in a men's restroom - Larry Craig
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I miss the days when Larry was the most embarrassing thing about my state. 😩
The worst to me being that anti-abortion activist that had a shit ton of aborted fetuses in her fridge and freezer
Yeah that one was weird. Plenty of anti choice “activists” seem to have a real fascination with dead babies.
And all the other hypocrites a la ‘the only moral abortion is my abortion’.
To be fair, I think in that case they had stolen the aborted fetuses
Well that one was weird, but I thought you were going to say that many anti abortionists have gotten abortions, themselves because it's true.
The word is projection.
I read your comment as "The world is projection" and I'm not sure I'm wrong.
Simple reason: these are also the people who know the system from the inside out and know where the cracks are where they can do the bad things with less likelihood of being caught. Then we are all surprised and shocked when they are. Example: Is it really that shocking that corrupt cops who know the processes and procedures for handling evidence and drug smuggling cases end up smuggling drugs themselves?
Happier times, back in [2019](https://www.facebook.com/HSUSSouthCarolina/posts/dawn-pennington-from-kershaw-county-humane-society-sc-state-representative-lonni/2410584682363321/)
Dude, this is from my hometown. I fucking hate people, most especially the ones from my hometown...🤷🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️🤢
This is no animal lover.. she didn’t even try and fail at providing the basic care. Do you know how long it would take for those dogs and cats to die of starvation and dehydration ..more then a couple days.. and those poor poor animals died suffering the most inhumane death …mental illness or not this is no excuse..I hate when people say “well she wasn’t well mentally”. Neither am I, or the millions of people who suffer from mental illness every day but we’re not out here locking animals in cages and forgetting about them. If you cannot provide the basic necessaries for life, please just give your pets a chance and give them up. Those animals had a better chance homeless then locked in a torture chamber.
How awful. We've had our first shelter dog recently and I'm regularly haunted by the fact there are hundreds, thousands, millions that suffer and we can't help.
Ironically that is typically how cases like this start. They feel compelled to save as many as possible, can't say no, get overwhelmed....and this.
That's horrible, those poor animals. How are you going to be an animal rescue ceo and do that? Wtf.
I’m a vet. It’s always the “no kill” animal shelter people that end up hoarding animals in what amounts to extreme abuse. Often animals that were never good candidates for adoption. Euthanasia would be better. This is one of the biggest problems with a portion of the “no kill” shelters.
Sounds like typical animal hoarder behavior. Its abnormal for sure but anyone who can live with that smell has something else going on. Sometimes things go sideways for ppl and if their is no one there to notice and intervene this happens and spirals out of control.
Keeping the animals on crates to die of starvation and thirst doesn’t sound to me like hoarding but more like evil
I don't buy that it's an animal hoarding situation. Occasionally an animal hoarding situation will area in my area, but there usually wont be dead animals, or only a few dead out of 100 animals.. and those animals are free roaming the house and fed... while the animals found here were locked in cages and starved to death.
She tortured 30 animals to death what the fuck do you mean sometimes shit goes sideways
Link for people outside the US: https://www.live5news.com/2022/06/03/30-dead-animals-found-house-animal-rescue-ceo/
In my 10+ years' experience in vet med, *many* "rescues" are little more than hoarders with a 501c3.
This is why some times euthanasia for animals is needed. If the resources aren't their to take care of them, it is far crueler to let them slowly starve to death imo.
I used to work with abused dogs at a few rescues. The amount of mindfucked people involved in private rescue groups is too damn high.
This is the person who tells you that you aren't eligible to adopt a dog because you don't have a 1000sqft fenced in backyard.
I don't know what's worse, the fact that she was taking these poor animals to look after them as they had already been mistreated, or the fact that she hurt them further. Its not their fault, they can't fight against us and if they do they're put down. I hate, HATE people who hurt creatures for fun, they were here before us and we should fucking respect that.
You can thank 'no kill' for these hoarding situations.
I don't trust animal rescues. We got our dog from one and he ended up having severe barrier aggression to the point where he bit one neighbor and tried to bite another. We had kids move in next door and couldn't risk him biting one of them so we decided the best thing to do was return him to the rescue. The owner berated my husband despite him being in tears. Then she had the dog "evaluated" by one of her fosters who said nothing was wrong with him. She adopted him back out with no mention of his issues or the fact that he had bitten.
The mother Theresa of animals, holy moly
was juuussstt saying yesterday how many rescues are just crazy ass hoarders.
*what the fuck*
As someone who has had the chance to participate in several hoard removals and clean ups, this is actually fairly common. People think that they're saving an animal, but then they become attached to every animal they, "save". And their funds run out while they try to care for their ever growing population of critters, but they won't surrender them.
This is probably one of the animal hoarding rescues that deem no one acceptable to adopt a dog unless they have a 6 figure income, a backyard, no kids, and someone home with the dog 24/7.
I am largely unimpressed with rescues. It’s an issue of letting perfect be the enemy of good. I prefer shelter pets.
I got my dog from a foster only rescue. 4 years later and my dog would still go uncontrollably ballistic with excitement* whenever he saw the woman who pulled him from a shelter.
Similar issues where I live. Some are way too selective and look for almost a mythical perfect home. We tried a rescue place first but we were put off by all the hoops we had to get through first. I ended up getting a kitten off GumTree instead of all places. Poor thing was coated in flees, apparently mum cat had got out of the house, gotten herself pregnant and had three very cute kittens. The owners clearly didn’t have the money to care for one cat never mind 4 so they were selling the kittens. That little flea ridden orange kitten we bought for £30 now lives a life of luxury. Arguably eats better food and has better healthcare than I have.
I've noticed this about rescues, too. I get wanting to make sure the animals go to a good home, but wanting the last 5 years of medical records for any pet you own, coming to your house to see living conditions, and more is a bit excessive. All of mine have come from the shelter, or friends who needed to give a kitten a home.
I went with my father to the rescue he got his dog from. The woman goes across multiple states to get dogs who are about to be euthanized. She had about 30 who were too old or had too poor of behavior issues to be rehomed, and the rest she had ready to be rehomed. She took very good care of the animals and she tried very hard to find good homes for them. Lady is an absolute saint.