A veterinarian of more than 20 years' experience says he'll never forget restraining an animal hoarder in Sydney as she tried to make a dash for the Queensland border.
"We had to repossess 96 cocker spaniels from her, and then she was found with another 20 later on," Dr Mark Lawrie said.
"When you went to the house, if the dog went to the toilet on the floor, she just put a piece of newspaper on it and then another piece of newspaper onto the next one and the next one — like a layer of newspaper and faeces."
Dr Lawrie — formerly the chief vet at RSPCA NSW and chief executive of the University Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Sydney — said the woman was also found with a foal in her house.
"She was raided so many times she travelled to Queensland to escape [the law]," he said.
"There she was found living in a car with 27 dogs and her mother."
What is animal hoarding?
Dr Lawrie said about 200 cases of animal hoarding were discovered in Australia each year.
He was concerned that number could rise "to thousands."
The RSPCA describes animal hoarding as failing to provide adequate care for an excess of animals.
The condition is considered a subset of hoarding, which was recognised as a mental disorder in 2013, and often occurs in an environment of squalor.
RSPCA team leader Laura Hyland said cats and dogs were the most common species hoarded.
"Reptiles, rodents, I've seen guinea pigs – all sorts of animals," Ms Hyland said.
Not black and white
Ms Hyland said most animal hoarders started out with good intentions with an affinity or passion for a particular animal or breed.
"They will collect to the point where it just gets out of control," she said.
"[It gets] to the point where they're not even seeing them as animals anymore, but just an item that they're collecting."
Ms Hyland said hoarding was not "black and white" and it was easy for the situation to spiral out of control — leaving the animals to suffer.
"There's such a large number of animals that the individual is failing to provide adequate duty of care to," she said.
"There's often injuries that we would observe due to being confined in a space or [being held in] unsanitary conditions … [they often have] quite poor nutrition."
She said the animals also endured significant mental distress.
"They'll often be very fearful of people and have some level of anxiety due to the situation that they're living in," Ms Hyland said.
Psychology of hoarding
Ms Hyland said a lot of the cases the RSPCA dealt with were linked to mental illness.
Hoarding therapist Tania Reid said the mental health aspect of animal hoarding was often overlooked.
"It's less studied [compared to object hoarding] in terms of what support and interventions help people," she said.
"The stuff is just a symptom — the problem is actually the attachment that they have in their head."
She said the typical animal hoarder was an older woman with a history of trauma.
"There's a certain comfort in collecting because it's much safer to attach to objects or animals [instead of people]," she said.
"If you have 90 cats in your house, they're always going to be there.
"They're not going to leave you. They're not going to hurt you."
Lack of awareness
Dr Lawrie said there was a need for greater awareness and support systems to prevent animal hoarders from repeating their behaviour after they were caught.
"Most of the animal welfare, or animal management officers, are fully aware and have experienced a hoarder or two or three or four in their working lifetime," he said.
He said there was a need for people to have access to the right resources to break the cycle.
"It's not easy, but there needs to be a reasonable amount of ongoing public education and education of key groups, human health, animal health, animal welfare, council managers and rangers," he said.
