Original Article: https://blog.theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/dog-hoarding/

It’s already been established that rescues and shelters are facing major capacity issues recently with the massive increase of animals that are being surrendered while suffering a decrease in pet adoption rates.

An animal rescue group in Arizona who specializes in rescuing giant breeds recently rescued more than 30 English Mastiffs from an 80-year-old hoarder’s house.

Arizona Mastiff Rescue says that the man was breeding the dogs nonstop.

“That’s how he made a living. He had multiple dogs in broken-down vehicles on his property and living on chains,” said AZ Mastiff Rescue’s president, Darlene Spencer.

The local rescue center also said that this unfortunate situation is becoming all too common and that the rescue kennels are always filled. In line with our more recent stories involving rescue groups coming out to tell people about the worsening shelter issues and to ask them to adopt and not breed, Spencer shared her thoughts on the situation.

“I think pre-COVID and during COVID, everybody wanted a dog. So it put a lot of people into this, ‘I can breed these dogs, I can make a lot of money,’” Spencer said.

Sadly, people who only look at the dogs as a way of income disregards the animal’s wellbeing. Spencer said that the animals pay the price in situations like this.

Puppy mills have always been a problem. But the pandemic brought upon a new surge of backyard breeders who share the same amount of neglect on their animals as puppy mills do, and, like the 80-year-old man, some backyard breeders are on the way to operating as large as puppy mills.

For people who adopted or bought a dog in the midst of the pandemic and can no longer provide for the animals or they simply don’t want the animal anymore, they inevitably surrender the dogs back to the shelters and that also adds to the capacity issues that a lot of shelters are facing now.

Along with asking people to opt for fostering their dogs or go for adoption, which you can do so here, Spencer also wishes that people would quit breeding for two years in order to lessen the negative impact that breeding does to both the animals and the rescue centers.

Again, Spencer shares the same sentiment about the overall situation as the other rescue groups and said that, “I’ve been in rescue for over 20 years, probably 21 years. And this is the worst I’ve ever seen it.”

Watch the news interview in the video below.

Source: The Animal Rescue Site Blog