Animal Hoarding: NPR Interview

On Monday, I drove to Portland to do an interview with Dick Gordon of NPR's The Story, relating my year and a half living in Oregon and Kentucky with anywhere from 75 to 110 animals with my former partner, who was later convicted of 295 counts of animal cruelty when 362 animals were found in the same Kentucky elementary school where we once ran Clean Slate Animal Rescue together.

To say the interview was difficult would be an understatement. To start with, I've been battling a wretched cold for a while now, which meant the hour and a half drive to P-Town was punctuated with bouts of coughing, random panic attacks and crying jags, and a lot of off-key singing along to the latest GLEE soundtrack. It wasn't pretty, in short. Still, I managed to get to the studio in one piece, and was met by a very nice studio tech whose name I have now completely forgotten (I was essentially focused on using as few 'ums' as possible, not choking to death on my own phlegm, and trying to keep from bursting into tears - still, I feel badly, because the tech was (a) pretty darn cute, and (b) a very nice guy).

We went into the studio, and started the interview a few minutes before eleven that morning. It was of course a remote interview - Dick Gordon wasn't there, and so I sat in the studio with headphones speaking into a gigantic puffy mic while the Cute Nameless Tech Man adjusted sound levels and smiled encouragingly. Over the course of the interview, I did have to stop a couple of times when I was completely overcome by coughing fits, but otherwise it went quite smoothly, I think. We basically ran through the entire year and a half, from my first date with Dave to our trek to California to buying the school in Kentucky, traveling cross-country, and then the decline of our relationship and my eventual departure. There were a couple of parts that were especially difficult - definitely talking about losing Benny and Donna to dog fights (the event that was the catalyst for my leaving) was very hard, but the other thing that was difficult was just trying to convey information about hoarding in general while still giving the story: I didn't want it to sound like I was preaching or some kind of expert, but definitely wanted to try and disseminate a little bit of factual information. I'm not sure whether I did that or not - honestly, the whole thing is kind of a blur.

My biggest concern at this point is just that I don't know how Dave will come out looking in all of this. It's never been my intent to make him look like a cruel man or even a crazy one... He loved the animals; that much was always clear. I wasn't a victim in any of this - it's not as though I was some wide-eyed twenty-year-old fresh off the farm, I'd been around the block a time or two. Had I known then what I know now about animal hoarding, I certainly would have handled things much differently. There are many things that I wish I had done differently, in terms of the medical care that the animals did (and did not) receive while I was there, and of course with respect to the unfathomable neglect they suffered after I left. Those are regrets I'll always carry with me, but the writing that I'm doing now, the interviews and the memoir and whatever else (if anything) comes of this, has nothing to do with any bitterness toward Dave. I haven't spoken with him since long before I read the news that he'd been arrested; I have no idea where he is now. I wish him luck. I hope that he's gotten the attention that he needs so that he might gain a little perspective and keep from repeating past patterns, but I don't know how realistic that hope is. I wish him the best.

ANYWAY... That's the stuff I didn't say in the interview, for what it's worth. As I said, I think that it went well. The episode is supposed to air on Tuesday, October 5th, so I'll be sure to post a link when it's available.