Sometimes, when we are too close to a problem, focused on the details, we can't see the whole picture. Or we see only the public persona of a warm-hearted animal lover, whose only fault, maybe, is caring too much, and miss the signs of a gathering darkness. The pattern can be easier to see from further away.

Carol Smith stepped unwittingly into another woman's dark cloud in Medina, Ohio when she went to help with a colicking horse. according to this January, 2008 article by Rebecca Meiser for the Cleveland Scene.

"Smith knew that Brooks regarded her as a sister, a best friend. So as she left the farm that morning, Smith silently asked God to forgive her betrayal as she dialed the number of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

"I want to report a case of animal cruelty," she said."

She didn't meet with the disbelief she expected. The name Patty Brooks was well known to them already.

The article describes how one woman crossed the line from breeder to hoarder, first with dogs, then with horses, and how prosecuting her and saving the animals nearly overwhelmed a small county.

This same pattern is repeated over and over again across the country, as individual Animal Control departments and Humane Societies struggle, ill-equipped to deal with investigating and prosecuting such cases, let alone with preventing them. Hoarding is known to anyone in rescue or veterinary practice, usually through painful experience. It is not part of the curriculum in vet school, and there is very little definition of exactly what the syndrome is and its root causes. No wonder it is like battling the Hydra.

The Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium, a collaborative effort to study the hoarding of animals, has written an article for the Psychiatric Times.

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/54031?pageNumber=1

On theory is that the syndrome's roots may be in attachment, in issues that may have started in the first years of childhood, that era that the Dalai Lama's recent conference, "Seeds of Compassion," identified as so critical.

Perhaps that is why it is so difficult to differentiate between those who work as animal caregivers or in animal rescue for healthy reasons, and those who use it to mask their compulsion. So what are the signs to watch for? The article gives a technical definition:

- accumulates a large number of animals;
- fails to provide minimal standards of nutrition, sanitation and veterinary care; and
- fails to act on the deteriorating condition of the animals (including disease, starvation and even death) or the environment (severely overcrowded and unsanitary conditions), or the negative impact of the collection on their own health and well-being.

Sixty percent of the cases studied were repeat offenders. The article cites similarities with object hoarding, compulsive shopping and other impulse control disorders that can have disastrous consequences for individuals and their families. Because animal hoarding involves living beings, however, the emotional impact on others is even greater.

When rescue work serves as a front for someone's disturbed psyche, it also damages legitimate efforts and closes hearts and minds.

The social costs far outweigh the financial burden of caring for the distressed animals.

The purpose of prosecution of these cases should include consequences and accountability, but also monitoring and restrictions on owning animals or using others as surrogates for owning animals.

Otherwise in a short while, a new set of people will be trying to clean up the mess.