Seeking a proper response
Published 12:01 am Wednesday, January 26, 2011
The news about the woman and her son charged with animal cruelty after 31 dead pets were discovered in their former Granite Falls home is unfortunately a familiar and grotesque scenario, and especially troubling because we don’t know what to do about it.
Clear-cut animal abuse — young sociopaths sharpening their skills on pets, for example — are rightly prosecuted under animal cruelty laws. In animal hoarding cases, however, while the animals are clearly victims of abuse, the people who collect them truly believe they are helping the animals, not hurting them. Experience shows that prosecuting animal hoarders does absolutely nothing to prevent them from engaging in the same behavior again.
“Hoarders are like drug addicts — you can’t cure them, you can only prevent relapses,” says Dr. Randall Lockwood, senior vice president, forensic sciences and anti-cruelty projects at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
So it’s no surprise that three more animals (luckily still healthy) were discovered in the apartment Diane Cowling and her son were living in after vacating the Granite Falls home sometime in December.
Animal rights advocates are rightfully outraged at the idea of animals being starved to death. Passionate calls to prosecute Cowling, and her son, are understandable. But comments on articles that call for her to be thrown in prison and starved to death reveal another kind of cruelty that actually makes it easier to understand why some people may wind up with a state of mind that perceives an uninhabitable house full of animals as a safer, kinder place to be than out among fellow humans. A Facebook page called “Prosecute Animal Abusers Diane Cowling and Her Son” calls on authorities to show the accused no mercy. Again, that’s their right.
But isn’t it possible to have concern and compassion for the animals in such cases, and for the humans?
Do animal rights advocates really believe that animal hoarders set out to be cruel to animals? Do animal rights advocates really believe that humans living in a house thick with feces and full of dead animals could really be in their right minds?
The ASPCA’s Lockwood explains: “Historically, a person who collected animals was viewed as an animal lover who got in over his or her head, but the truth is that people who hoard are experiencing a total loss of insight. They have no real perception of the harm they’re doing to the animals.”
A different legal model, perhaps one based on successful drug court programs, would do more to help animals, and humans.
