Pet owners with hoarding tendencies can affect their health and that of animals in care, study finds – ScienceDaily

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Animal lovers who struggle to care for many pets, and have personal hoarding tendencies, may be jeopardizing the quality of their own well-being and that of those in their care, according to a recent MSU collaborative study.

The resulting paper “Increased Household Animal Ownership Correlates with Worse Health Outcomes Based on Health Care Indicators Investigated in Canines and Felines in Rural Mississippi” was published in a recent online edition of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Written by Mary E. Dozier and Ben Porter, assistant professors in the MSU Department of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Jacob Shivley and Mary “Becky” Telle, both clinical assistant professors in the CVM department of clinical sciences, the document will also be published in the next print edition of JAVMA.

“Although most people with hoarding disorder hoard items, for some people their main problem is having more animals than they can care for,” said Dozier, whose main research focus is characterization and treatment of hoarding disorder. “Most of the research on animal hoarding has focused on extreme cases. We wanted to see what normative patterns of animal ownership look like, particularly in a rural setting, and if there were any trends we could uncover related to animal health “.

Dozier and Porter examined a decade of records from MSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine’s Community Veterinary Services, looking for the number of canine and feline animals per household and indicators of animal health, both positive, such as dental visits, and negatives. such as hydration problems.

Dozier said that people with animal hoarding disorder may not recognize how their hoarding tendencies interfere with the health of their pets because they often feel they are “saving” the animals and fail to recognize the cost to both the animals and themselves. themselves.

Their research revealed that animals from homes with eight or more animals were associated with poorer health, likely because owners own more animals than they can adequately handle.

Dozier said: “One of my goals is to find ways to identify people who might need help. This research project was the first step in finding ways to detect animal hoarding and then connect those people with mental health services. in the community.”

Dozier is currently leading a research project funded by the National Institutes of Health to help older adults with hoarding disorder. Her team provides free cleansing treatment to seniors who live within a one-hour drive from campus. Interested individuals can call Dozier at 662-325-0523.