Animal hoarding targeted in Horry County

Claudia Lauer

Nov. 2, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- The story of the woman who lives with dozens of cats seems to be a fictional cautionary tale for most people, but Horry County could soon take steps to prevent the real-life problems that accompany the condition known as animal hoarding.

The compulsive hoarding of animals is often a psychiatric disorder in which people feel the need to rescue more animals than they can care for, and the result is usually a health issue for the humans and animals involved. The Horry County Council will hear first reading of an ordinance Tuesday to treat animal hoarding as a punishable offense and to allow animal control officers to remove animals from those situations.

"It has been a problem in certain districts in the county. We had one situation where a person had 56 dogs inside of a single-wide trailer, and when officers stepped inside, they fell through the floor because it had rotted from all of the animal waste," said Paul Whitten, Horry County's director of Public Safety. "I think any attempt to put a number where it becomes unsafe to have that many animals, I think that number would really be arbitrary."

Most area municipalities don't outline animal hoarding in their municipal codes, said Arrigo Carotti, assistant Horry County attorney. Carotti said he searched for examples of municipal code throughout the area, and the closest he could find was in Greenville County. Whitten and other public safety officials said adding specific language to the county's codes would allow them more recourse when animal hoarding is reported.

Determining what constitutes animal hoarding was also a concern because rural residents often have dozens of hunting dogs or dozens of animals in an agricultural capacity that may be well cared for, Carotti said. The county shied away from assigning a number, instead defining hoarding as having an unusually large number of animals without the ability to feed, house and provide medical care.

Animal hoarders usually don't understand or acknowledge their inability to care for their animals. Houses can be overrun by animal waste and the animals are often kept inside because the owners are afraid others will see their poor health, but conditions don't have to reach that critical point to be considered hoarding, according to the psychiatric research group Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium.

Tore Gintol, director of admissions at Lighthouse Care Center, a mental health facility in Conway, said that facility doesn't treat many patients for hoarding disorders, but that doesn't mean it isn't an issue.

"It's not the kind of disorder where someone would walk into Lighthouse seeking help," he said.

Several states, including Hawaii and Illinois, have written punishments and specific psychiatric treatment requirements into their animal cruelty codes. Carotti said Horry County will not require anyone to seek mental health services, but penalties are possible.

"There's a lot about this ordinance that will have to be on a case-by-case basis. We don't want to include a number because there could be cases of animal hoarding with a smaller number that would be excluded out, and cases where animal hoarding isn't what's going on based on the condition of the animals that get wrongly included," he said. "In the same way, we don't want to mandate a punishment because in some cases it may be enough to remove the animals and abate the situations. In others, there may be a fine or other penalty depending on the severity."

County Councilman Bob Grabowski, who is a constable for Horry County and goes out on occasional police calls, said he supports the ordinance.

"There was one house where we walked in and there were so many cats that I had to walk outside to catch my breath because of the ammonia smell" from their waste, he said. "It didn't appear to be a healthy situation for the animals or the people who were living there."

Other councilmen said they had received calls from neighbors of animal hoarders, who were being affected by the animals and the conditions of the houses in their neighborhoods. Hoarding, which has been a relatively unknown disorder for decades, has gained attention through a reality show on the A&E network called "Hoarders" that documents the lives of both animal and possession hoarders.

Contact CLAUDIA LAUER at 626-0301.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0119-39357416