As viewers of the popular reality shows about hoarders can likely confirm, peering inside the homes of people who suffer from the psychological compulsion to collect things has a certain morbid attraction, until you realize the toll it takes on the families of the afflicted—and it's far worse when the "things" they're collecting are living, feeling beings.

Animal hoarding is a serious and growing problem, with hoarders taking on far more animals than they can properly care for. The number of reported cases is on the rise, leading the Animal Legal Defense Fund to call hoarding "the number one animal cruelty crisis facing companion animals in communities throughout the country."

Chillingly, the so-called "no kill" movement propagated by the likes of Nathan Winograd offers cover for these disturbed individuals, many of whom claim to be "rescuing" the animals and attempt to justify the suffering that they cause as a matter of principle. A Los Angeles Times blog post reported that a quarter of the roughly 6,000 new hoarding cases reported each year in the U.S. consist of supposed "shelters" and "rescues."

Animals kept in crates at a “no kill” shelter.

Even when rescues and animal shelters aren't hoarding animals themselves—like the self-proclaimed animal "hospice and rehabilitation center" called "Angel's Gate" and the now-defunct "Sacred Vision Animal Sanctuary"—they all too often give away animals to anyone who will take them, including hoarders, to manipulate their euthanasia statistics, regardless of what tragedy that translates into for the animals.

Here are just a few recent examples:

• When a "rescue" in Georgia shut down, the people who arrived to retrieve the remaining animals discovered the bones of dozens of animals on the property, including the remains of dogs who had been put into crates to die.
• Two operators of a "no kill" rescue group were arrested in Tennessee when authorities found more than 120 dogs and one cat in a U-Haul truck bound for Virginia, without any air supply or circulation. The animals had been removed from California animal shelters and were crammed four or five to a cage. One dog was dead, and the others were found wallowing in urine and feces, without access to water or even a clean place to stand.
• A family abandoned their dog on someone's doorstep in a Michigan town where the local animal shelter requires payment of a "surrender fee" to accept animals, as many shelters have begun charging in an attempt to keep animals out and their euthanasia statistics low.
• When animal-control officials searched a "no kill" cat shelter in Indiana, they found 34 cats living in filth and squalor. Four of the cats subsequently died, and many others were sick
• The operators of an animal rescue in New York were charged with 54 misdemeanor counts after 68 dogs and cats were removed from their "unsanitary" home.
• One New Jersey rescue claimed to be "saving" puppies from animal shelters in the South, but it was actually selling them for profit in the North.

The failure of "no kill" animal shelters and rescues to address the problems facing homeless animals—and often making matters worse—is why PETA remains focused on the solution to the animal overpopulation crisis: creating a no-birth nation. PETA's fleet of mobile low-cost veterinary clinics (responsible for sterilizing 10,564 animals in 2011 and almost 80,000 so far since 2001!) and our advocacy of strong spay-and-neuter legislation are key to keeping animals out of the hands of hoarders and other people who don't have their best interests at heart and guaranteeing that every animal born has a loving, permanent home awaiting him or her.

How You Can Help Animals in Shelters

Volunteer to help your local animal shelter screen potential adopters and placement partners. Animal shelters can contact PETA for placement-partner applications and agreements. Please also be sure to spay or neuter your animal companions and encourage others to do the same—it's the best way to end the need for animal rescues altogether!

The length of the current economic downturn has taken its toll both on people—many of whom are struggling to find housing and jobs—and on the animals who depend on them. As a result, animal shelters are receiving record numbers of abandoned animals, stretching their already limited resources to capacity.

Overcrowding at a limited admission (no-kill) shelter

These problems are intensified by the animal overpopulation crisis, which, even in a strong economy, causes many animal shelters to struggle with the burden of homeless and unwanted animals. Unlike complicated fiscal policy, though, the solution to this problem is simple—by implementing and enforcing mandatory spay-and-neuter laws, communities can reduce animal populations to manageable levels, ensuring that every animal can be cared for. PETA not only is working to promote the passage of such legislation but also operates several mobile spay-and-neuter clinics, sterilizing 10,564 animals in 2011 alone and nearly 80,000 to date!

Sadly, at this critical time, many animal shelters are implementing shameful limited-admission (no-kill) policies without first having reduced the number of unwanted animals (though some have now wised up). Many of these animal shelters are betraying animals by adopting guidelines that make the problem much worse, such as requiring appointments and admission fees for people to surrender animals, turning away strays who aren't well socialized because they are not adoptable (even if they're at risk of being harmed by people who consider them a nuisance), forcing people to wait until space opens up to take in any more animals, refusing to accept animals from outside a certain town or region, and giving animals away for free without proper screening.

These horribly misguided practices are a blueprint for disaster. The failure of these limited-admission policies has been proved again and again, as in these stories from 2011:

• The mayor of a Pennsylvania town with an out-of-control feral cat problem explained, "The no-kill killed us. That's what did it. We can't have a no-kill shelter that doesn't euthanize animals."
• A Louisiana animal shelter was turned over to a no-kill group and was almost immediately found to be keeping animals in criminally cruel and severely crowded conditions. After one month, the animal shelter began euthanizing animals because of humane concerns.
• A Missouri hoarder said that before opening her home to nearly five dozen animals, "she reached out to many animal shelters, but she said none of them have been able to help."
• Two cats died when they were left in a box outside a New York animal shelter that charges a surrender fee.

Companion animals depend on us to take care of them, which is why PETA accepts all animals who need help—without requiring a fee or an appointment—whether they are suffering from a terminal illness that requires euthanasia that their guardians can't afford, were abandoned during a natural disaster, or were injured in Afghanistan and brought stateside by a caring soldier.

How You Can Help Abandoned Animals

Is there an animal shelter that's turning away animals in your community? Find out—and try to ensure that it does what's right to help animals.

I volunteered at a "no kill" cat shelter before coming to PETA. There, I saw firsthand why "no kill" policies do not work. The cats at the shelter were confined to small cages, and many had been there for years, including one poor 11-year-old girl who had been caged since kittenhood.

PETA's Community Animal Project freed this feral cat from her suffering, who had been dragging herself along the street with a broken leg.

This shelter even caged feral cats—which is as cruel as keeping a squirrel or a raccoon in a cage. One cat, Ginger, haunts me to this day. Terrified of humans, she cowered in her litterbox 24/7, never playing or showing any sign of happiness. The only time that she ever left her litterbox was to hiss and spit at people who came near her cage. Is this a worthwhile life for any animal?

During my time there, the shelter received dozens of calls each day from people who wanted to surrender their cats, but shelter workers never said "Yes" to a single person. It was always full. I can't count the number of calls that ended with some variation of, "Well, if you can't help me, I'm just going to turn him loose." An outdoor life is no life for a cat. Cats outside are at risk for disease, abuse, being hit by cars, and worse. And other people simply dumped cats on the shelter's doorstep. One person stuffed 13 cats into two carriers and took off.

This is why, instead of "no kill," I refer to these shelters as "limited admission." It's much more accurate, and it doesn't demonize open-admission shelters, which have the Herculean task of taking in all animals, no matter how old, sick, aggressive, injured, or otherwise unadoptable they may be, even when it would be easier to simply turn them away.

Written by Sarah Preston, intake manager for PETA's Cruelty Investigations Department

As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and nowhere is this truer than when it comes to spaying and neutering dogs and cats. That's why I'm so excited to announce that 2010 was a banner year for PETA's mobile clinics, which spayed and neutered a record 10,683 animals. That includes 919 feral cats and 478 pit bulls (135 of whom were sterilized at no charge to their guardians). In addition, 1,372 surgeries were performed on the animals of indigent families. Our clinics have sterilized more than 69,000 dogs, cats, and rabbits in the last decade!

All those spay/neuter surgeries will prevent the births of hundreds of thousands of kittens and puppies who would have otherwise likely struggled for survival on the mean streets or been euthanized simply because there aren't enough good homes.

PETA's fieldworkers meet many people, particularly older residents who live in rural areas and who have never even heard the term "spaying." This was the case with Ring Eye's family. PETA's fieldworkers transported Ring Eye to and from her spay appointment, and her appreciative family even invited them to stay for dinner!

Spot also got a lift to his neuter appointment, courtesy of PETA. The boy holding Spot hopes to become a veterinarian one day. PETA's fieldworkers stop by this address often, and the kids are always very interested in their visit. They are hoping to show the kids how to be compassionate toward animals.

TeeTee lives indoors, and her guardian treats her as a beloved family member, but she simply did not have the $200 that most veterinarians in the area charge to spay a dog. The woman heard about PETA's program and was extremely grateful for this service.

PETA's clinics also provide spay/neuter services to local animal shelters and rescue groups to ensure that none of the animals who are adopted contributes to the overpopulation crisis by having puppies and kittens!

2010 was a booming year for PETA's clinics, but I know already that 2011 is going to be even better, because PETA has secured funding for a third mobile clinic! The yet-to-be-named state-of-the-art clinic will join PETA's SNIP and ABC clinics, which work around the clock to fight the overpopulation crisis in PETA's own backyard.

Want to help? Check out PETA's ABC pages to learn how to promote animal birth control in your own community and reduce the number of homeless animals who need to be rescued in the first place. Please also join PETA in calling on elected officials to pass mandatory spay/neuter laws in your state, county, and town. Together, we can become a no-birth nation—which is the only way to become a "no-kill" nation.

Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post

Animal hoarding was a dirty secret until hoarders began to appear on our TV screens and showed us how they are compelled to collect so many dogs, cats, or parrots that the animals end up living in cages that are only inches bigger than the animals' own bodies—for their entire lives.

Imagine what it must be like for these animals—stuck in a see-through box, sitting in their own filth, unable to take a step, never comfortable, constantly being yelled at to be quiet, or ignored because their captors are so accustomed to hearing them crying, whining, and working away at the cage bars?

Now, though, the cat's out of the bag, and perhaps more cats will soon be out of hoarders' hands.

But, like a virus, the hoarding impulse has morphed into something even more insidious. Hoarders are trying to take over our animal shelters.

One hundred years ago, New Yorkers stopped stray dogs from being drowned in the Hudson. Forty years ago, humane societies stopped municipalities from killing unwanted dogs and cats by using hot, unfiltered truck exhaust fumes, causing the animals to choke to death.

Today, while some primitive pounds remain, great strides in humane sheltering standards have been made. There are places where behaviorists work to reduce abandoned animals' separation anxiety, groomers cut away matted hair to make animals comfortable and adoptable, and walkers are employed to ensure that no cage paralysis sets in. There are municipal animal shelters that cope with tens of thousands of animals a year yet still provide a comfortable, caring environment.

But "institutional hoarders" now threaten to turn back the clock on these hard-won reforms by bullying authorities into adopting magical-sounding "no-kill" policies that do animals no favors. Inside such hoarding facilities (many of which eventually end up in the news after raids by law enforcement agencies), dogs and cats—sick or healthy, old or young—are reduced to withdrawn and pathetic wrecks because of the crowding and neglect that they endure.

In well-run animal shelters, managers know that you can't store animals as if they were oranges. Tough decisions must be made about who remains on the adoption floor and who goes to sleep forever. As long as people fail to spay and neuter their animal companions, continue to acquire and dispose of animals casually, and buy from breeders and pet shops instead of adopting, there will be far more dogs and cats than there are good homes for them all. Millions more.

Many hoarding facilities leave the dirty work to others, refusing to accept sick, aged, or "unadoptable" animals. In order to avoid euthanasia, they reduce operational hours to prevent drop-offs and adopt animals into bad homes. Severe crowding means that diseases flourish, causing misery and, ironically, often leading to mass euthanasia of all the animals, even those who entered the facility in good health.

In New Jersey recently, a no-kill group that had been in charge of a particular animal shelter left the shelter to another group's management. Their successors had this to say about what they found when they took over:

Giving an animal a quiet, painless, and peaceful death is a sad indictment of our throwaway society, but a life in a cramped, filthy cage is not a "rescue."

Last month in Virginia, PETA ran an ad pleading for homes for 28 cats. Three people responded. In the same area, PETA has spayed or neutered more than 63,000 dogs and cats. Birth prevention never completely staunches the flow of unwanted animals, but "fixing" one dog or cat saves countless more animals from homelessness and misery.

Municipalities need to stand firm. Time and money must go into mandatory spaying and neutering as well as guardianship education—not into warehousing animals. The no-kill movement is harmful to humane sheltering.

Written by Ingrid E. Newkirk

PLEASE NOTE: There's a picture below that is very disturbing, but for people who are concerned about animal suffering and homelessness, it's important to face the tragic reality of the overpopulation crisis and its consequences. Animals can't afford to have people look away.

Her name was Big Girl, but there was almost nothing left of her. She was so still, so slight, and so cold to the touch that field workers thought that she was already dead. But the tiny 6-month-old pit bull was still alive. Barely.

Big Girl never knew the love and care that we wish every dog experienced; by the time we arrived, she had endured prolonged, incomprehensible agony. When we found her collapsed on the ground, she weighed less than the chain she was tied to. She had clearly been starved—she was a pile of bones and had raw, mostly hairless skin with absolutely no body fat. A veterinarian later told us that Big Girl's stomach contained nothing but dirt, leaves, a piece of corn cob with two kernels on it, and a piece of dry, caked fecal matter. Big Girl had been left to suffer for so long that she had begun to decompose. Four different generations of maggots were eating away at her body. When we gently peeled her off the ground, she moaned. She could not see us or hear us, but we hope she knew that we were there to help her.

We sent Big Girl off to heaven with kind words and a gentle lethal injection. We wished we could have ended her misery much, much sooner. Those who condemn open-admission animal shelters and organizations like PETA for having to euthanize sick, injured, dying, and unwanted animals must look closely at the source of the overpopulation crisis—people who breed animals, those who neglect and abuse them, and consumers who choose to buy animals from breeders and pet shops instead of adopting from their local animal shelter.

No one hates the ugly reality of euthanasia more than the shelter workers who hold the syringe. Sometimes, especially when animals have known no kindness and are suffering, the best that we can offer an animal like Big Girl, Asia, and others is a painless and dignified release from a world that showed them no love or compassion.

P.S. The man responsible for Big Girl's horrific condition (as well as that of another dog, who suffered from a vaginal prolapse) was charged and convicted for the condition of both dogs, and he was prohibited from owning animals.

Written by Jeff Mackey

In my first year working at a grossly substandard animal shelter in Maryland, I forced myself to go in early to euthanize dogs by holding them in my arms and gently helping them escape an uncaring world without trauma or pain and to spare them from being stabbed haphazardly—while they were fully conscious, terrified and aware—in the general vicinity of their hearts with needles blunt from reuse and left to thrash on the floor until they finally died by the callous people who would arrive later to do the job.

I always wonder how anyone cannot recognize that there is a world of difference between painlessly euthanizing animals out of compassion—aged, injured, sick, and dying animals whose guardians can't afford euthanasia, for instance—as PETA does, and causing them to suffer terror, pain, and a prolonged death while struggling to survive on the streets, at the hands of untrained and uncaring "technicians," or animal abusers.

Diamond was suffering from a painful facial tumor that was slowly eating away at his face

Sasha had a severely infected bite wound.

It's easy to point the finger at those who are forced to do the "dirty work" caused by a throwaway society's casual acquisition and breeding of dogs and cats who end up homeless and unwanted, but at PETA, we will never turn our backs on neglected, unloved, and homeless animals—even if the best we can offer them is a painless release from a world that doesn't have enough heart or homes with room for them. It makes it easy for people to throw stones at us, but we are against all needless killing: for hamburgers, fur collars, dissection, sport hunting―the works. PETA handled far more animals than 2,124 in 2008. In fact, we took in more than 10,000 dogs and cats and work very hard to persuade people to spay and neuter their animals and to commit to a lifetime of care and respect for them. We go so far as to transport animals to and from our spay/neuter clinics, where they are spayed or neutered and given vet care, often for free! Since 2001, PETA's low- to no-cost spay-and-neuter mobile clinics, SNIP and ABC, have sterilized more than 50,000 animals, preventing hundreds of thousands of animals from being born, neglected, abandoned, abused, or euthanized when no one wanted them. And on a national level, PETA is focusing on the root of the problem through our Animal Birth Control (ABC) campaign.

Big Girl was still alive when a field worker found her

If anyone has a good home, love, and respect to offer, we beg them: Go to a shelter and take one or two animals home. The problem is that few people do that, choosing instead to go to a breeder or a pet shop and not "fixing" their dogs and cats, which contributes to the high euthanasia rate that animal shelters face. Most of the animals we took in and euthanized could hardly be called "pets," as they had spent their lives chained up in the back yard, for instance. They were unsocialized, never having been inside a building of any kind or known a pat on the head. Others were indeed someone's, but they were aged, sick, injured, dying, too aggressive to place, and the like, and PETA offered them a painless release from suffering, with no charge to their owners or custodians.

Every day, PETA's fieldworkers help abused and neglected dogs—many of them pit bulls nowadays and many of them forced to live their lives on chains heavy enough to tow an 18-wheeler—by providing them with food; clean water; lightweight tie-outs; deworming medicine; flea, tick, and fly-strike prevention; free veterinary care; sturdy wooden doghouses stuffed with straw bedding; and love.

What we see is enough to make you lose faith in humanity. One pit bull we gained custody of, named Asia, looked like a skeleton covered with skin when PETA released her from the 15-pound chain she had been kept on for years. Asia suffered from three painful and deadly intestinal obstructions, which prevented her from keeping any food down. She faced an agonizing, lingering death, so our veterinarian recommended euthanasia to end her suffering. We pursued criminal charges against those responsible for her condition, leading to their conviction for cruelty to animals. That is just one of the dozens of cases we see every week.

The majority of adoptable dogs are never brought through our doors (we refer them to local adoption groups and walk-in animal shelters). Most of the animals we house, rescue, find homes for, or put out of their misery come from miserable conditions, which often lead to successful prosecution and the banning of animal abusers from ever owning or abusing animals again.

Santana had facial injuries so serious that his right eye was swollen shut and his jaw was ripped and hanging

This dog was suffering from advanced cancer

As long as animals are still purposely bred and people aren't spaying and neutering their companions, open-admission animal shelters and organizations like PETA must do society's dirty work. Euthanasia is not a solution to overpopulation but rather a tragic necessity given the present crisis. PETA is proud to be a "shelter of last resort," where animals who have no place to go or who are unwanted or suffering are welcomed with love and open arms.

Please, if you care about animals, help prevent more of them from being born only to end up chained and left to waste away in people's back yards, suffering on mean streets where people kick at them or shoo them away like garbage, tortured at the hands of animal abusers, or, alas, euthanized in animal shelters for lack of a good home. If you want to save lives, always have your animals spayed or neutered.

Written by Ingrid E. Newkirk