Rescue Hoarding: A Personal Narrative

Since starting my website just over a year ago, I've gotten a few inquiries from people who are - or at least think they are - working for, or involved with, rescue hoarders. For those unfamiliar with the term, rescue hoarding is the term given to individuals who take on more animals than they can reasonably care for, under the guise of rescuing these animals from homelessness, abuse, or euthanasia. It is becoming increasingly common for such people to organize themselves as non-profits, actively taking donations in order to bring in even more animals, who will ultimately be neglected and in all likelihood will never, ever be adopted out.

For a year and a half, I lived with an individual who was ultimately convicted of animal hoarding. It's an odd thing to try to describe to outsiders what our lives were like, as it's generally agreed that one would have to be nuts to live under such conditions. In order to try and put some of my experiences in perspective, I've decided to begin posting the story as it began and ultimately unfolded. I have no idea if this will be helpful to others or not, but it is my hope that individuals who either see the potential to become hoarders themselves, or who are concerned they may be working with a hoarder, may find information and support through my story.

For the next few months, I will post periodically of my experiences with Clean Slate Animal Rescue, which I co-founded in the spring of 2006. The experiences I had in the year and a half subsequent to founding the rescue are difficult to describe: my partner and I saved lives, worked constantly, traveled many miles. I learned more in that eighteen months than in my entire life prior to that time. During the final months that I spent with the rescue, I watched our hard work unravel as my partner continued to take in animals that I knew we could not care for and would never place. We lived in isolation; the health of the animals began to decline; no money was coming in, while plenty of it was going out. I began plotting my escape in the spring of 2007, whispering my plans to my family during late-night phone calls when I could get time away from my partner. In November of 2007, I left Kentucky with my two dogs and what few belongings I could bring along without arousing suspicion, telling my partner that I would be gone for two weeks. I had an apartment and a new job waiting for me in Maine.

Leaving behind the animals I'd come to love was one of the most difficult things I've ever done. I wish there had been another way for me to help them; I think, often, of the ways I could have handled things differently, ways I could have been more proactive about assisting with adoptions or insisting we take no more animals in. I regret, everyday, the cowardice of my leaving, and wish I had understood my partner's mental condition better, so that I might have alleviated some of the suffering that ultimately took place in that building. In February of 2009, I learned that my former partner had been charged with animal hoarding; 362 animals were found inside the school, the living kept in rooms with the dead. I read reports online, scanning the photos for pictures of the dogs I had helped to rescue. The faces I had known were now scarred and battleworn, their fur patchy with mange, their ribs showing as a result of malnutrition and neglect.

A story like this doesn't happen overnight. In the coming months, I'll do what I can to tell things from the beginning - those first tentative meetings in Oregon, the gradual escalation, the trek cross-country, the final unraveling. There are no monsters in this story, there is no clear bad guy. Animal rescue is a complicated world, and hoarding is an illness that the mental health community is still struggling to understand. If my story can help the animals or the individuals impacted by the phenomenon of rescue hoarding, then I believe it is worth the telling.