http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/26/ohio-animal-hoarder-body-found-partially-eaten-by-dogs/?cmpid=prn_aol&icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl23%7Csec3_lnk3%26pLid%3D155636

"An Ohio animal hoarder was discovered dead Friday at his home and partially eaten by some of his 50 or so dogs, KSL.com reported. "I've been to a lot of bad situations since I've been here," Benny Call, the Lawrence County dog warden said, according to the report. "I believe this was the worst." Authorities apparently did not release the dead man’s name because they haven’t located any relatives. But the report said it appears he had been dead for few weeks. "He probably cared for the dogs, but he just got overwhelmed."

• Benny Call, the Lawrence County dog warden The dogs were in poor condition. Some needed to be put down and others starved to death, the report said. Eight were reportedly taken to a local dog shelter. Authorities had asked the man if he need assistance with the pets, but he would reject the help, the report said. "He'd just run us off," Call said, according to the report. "He probably cared for the dogs, but he just got overwhelmed."

Ugh...

I hate animal hoarders. I hate them. I understand loving animals and that it might be a compulsion, but I think it's disgusting, ignorant, and irresponsible. I won't say he deserved it but I can't say i feel that sorry for him either. poor puppies ❤

It's not that it "might" be a "compulsion." Hoarding is both an illness in its own right, and can be a symptom of other serious diseases like dementia. Unfortunately, because of hateful, judgmental attitudes directed at sufferers (of hoarding and many, many other mental illnesses,) said sufferers are often frequently unwilling to seek help while they're still in full control of their faculties, out of fear of being viciously stigmatized, and so their diseases progress out of control.

The mentally ill are not "acceptable targets" for anyone's hatred or ignorance, end of story. Quite frankly, I'm sick to death of seeing the mentally ill being bashed on so openly solely because of their illness. It's not okay. No, their illnesses should never be used as an excuse for their behavior, but they should never be used as a reason to bash on them, either.

when i said "might" i meant that i know it is. i know that hoarding of any kind is a mental illness. i understand that, but it's also the person's choice to not seek help. whenever animal abuse is involved, i immediately lose all respect for the person regardless of the situation. the situation is very disgusting and irresponsible, no matter what you say. them believing that they can take care of all of the animals is ignorance. even if they have a compulsion to hoard animals, that doesn't mean that their common sense magically disappears. my grandmother is a borderline animal hoarder so i'm not speaking out of ignorance either.

I'm not surprised. The dogs were probably starving by that time(if not before then as a lot of hoarders don't feed there animals properly whether due to not having the money or just not doing it) and it's not like dead dude was using his body anymore.

That's depressing, and NOT fair to the animals. They starved because he was a selfish bastard.

No.

The dogs starved because the man was not capable of taking care of them, and he was too ill to recognize that fact. The dogs starved because his family and community left them with him, and took absolutely no measures to help him or the animals. The dogs starved because the people who could have helped didn't, and so both the dogs and their owner suffered.

And the excuse of "Well, we tried to help, but he just ran us off!" doesn't hold water. Police have the authority to take into custody any individual who is posing a threat to themselves or to other people, as well as people who are neglecting their animals - intentionally or not. There was absolutely no reason at all for that man to have been left alone, except that no one wanted to take responsibility for the situation. And because of that, that man is dead, and so are most of the dogs he thought he was helping - and it all could have been avoided if the authorities had simply asserted their authority. End of story.

I know a lot of young people here value animal life more than human life, to the point of utterly vilifying the human element in most stories where animals and humans interact, but get a grip. I've said it once before and I'll say it again - bashing on the mentally ill is not fucking cool. It's ignorant and hateful and that attitude is why the mentally ill are so viciously stigmatized, and rarely get help of their own accord for fear of being stigmatized.

I feel really bad for the dogs, but then I feel bad for the man too. :( What he did was horrible and unacceptable, but I wish that when people really needed help, they weren't so afraid to accept it. :(

Oh wow, GET OVER yourself and get off your soapbox, seriously.

Second, he REFUSED help many times and chased people off his property. He refused assistance. He hoarded like any hoarder and he's NOT excused for it. You also need to learn to not "read in to" such simple statements. Seriously, get a life. I never said I value animals over humans. Know what the difference is? Those animals were LOCKED UP and helpless. Yes I think authorities should have done more, but it's actually hard to do that if the animals look cared for, which they might have been, who knows.

They don't know. This man is NOT free of all blame. Sounds like he lived in at least a partially rural area and it sounds like he wasn't neglecting them until well, he died. The system might have failed but so did he. If this was children and they were actually being taken care of (imagine kids in cult environments with no evidence of abuse) they state couldn't take them away, but then if the person died and the kids starved it would be the same to me. He refused assistance, and it seems like he was taking care of them before this. So I'm with on this, what he did was ignorant. You aren't removed of all blame for a mental illness. I won't even bring my own into this.

How cute that the owner was only partially eaten, and some dogs still starved to death ;_;

As for the blame/mental illness debate, this is one of those grey areas. Almost any criminal can be relieved of guilt if you chase the path of determinism back through their 'decisions' (i.e. there is no true free will, so nothing can truly be entirely their fault), regardless of their mental state. People vilify murderers and rapists without issue, when they could very well have 'mental illnesses' or just a mental set-up that predisposes them to committing such acts. I'm not saying doing so is good/bad, just that people draw the line of blame in different places.

If you're going to try to defend the vilification of the severely mentally ill, you might want to pick a better argument than the "slippery slope" fallacy. Like most fallacies, it doesn't hold up when exposed to simple logic.

Oh, I know it won't hold up at all in a courtroom - it's more just my way of looking at it, I suppose. The point I was trying to make is that, in my opinion, it's not just mental health that can result in 'diminished responsibility', but experiences, biological make-up, etc. too. But I'm looking at it from a hard deterministic viewpoint, which wouldn't make sense to those that don't look at it that way.

This is sad. It's not really like dogs to eat dead people unless they are seriously starving, so it's even more unfortunate that they must have been in such a sad state before his passing.

Yay, intelligence!

^^^^^^^^^^^^

No.

The dogs starved because the man was not capable of taking care of them, and he was too ill to recognize that fact. The dogs starved because his family and community left them with him, and took absolutely no measures to help him or the animals. The dogs starved because the people who could have helped didn't, and so both the dogs and their owner suffered.

And the excuse of "Well, we tried to help, but he just ran us off!" doesn't hold water. Police have the authority to take into custody any individual who is posing a threat to themselves or to other people, as well as people who are neglecting their animals - intentionally or not. There was absolutely no reason at all for that man to have been left alone, except that no one wanted to take responsibility for the situation. And because of that, that man is dead, and so are most of the dogs he thought he was helping - and it all could have been avoided if the authorities had simply asserted their authority. End of story.

I know a lot of young people here value animal life more than human life, to the point of utterly vilifying the human element in most stories where animals and humans interact, but get a grip. I've said it once before and I'll say it again - bashing on the mentally ill is not fucking cool. It's ignorant and hateful and that attitude is why the mentally ill are so viciously stigmatized, and rarely get help of their own accord for fear of being stigmatized.

^ This. The subject alone is depressing, and it's sad. But authorities could have done something before it turned to this- and family/neighbors, SOMEONE could have spoken up and had it reported. The fact that hoarding never gets reported until it's a noticeable problem- EX: The owner dies, is ridiculous.

it's interesting that some of you have implied that people with these kinds of mental issues are ultimately at fault because they choose not to seek help. it's not even that they don't choose -- a lot of the time, they don't know that they have a mental illness such as compulsive hoarding. they think what they're doing is all right and justifiable in their own worlds. of course it doesn't make a lot of sense to someone of sound mind and body, but that's honestly the truth of the matter and there really is no argument than can or should be made against it. to be frank, this guy was no michael vick. that example right there should make you think twice about how you look at mental illness in these types of cases. (and if you forgive vick but can't find it in your heart to have a little humility for someone like this... well, your priorities must be pretty fucked.)

i agree that the authorities should have played a bigger role in rectifying the situation instead of letting it continue on. being "run off" is no excuse to put a mentally ill person's life at further risk as well as the dogs he was in charge of. unfortunately, there is a phenomena sweeping america where even authority figures and organizations have become afraid of their own shadows: they are scared shitless of getting sued by someone, anyone who becomes offended at any time during an investigation, detainment, or what-have-you. not only do they not want to take responsibility, but they also don't want to lose a paycheck over it.

everyone has become so concerned about being politically correct that sight has been utterly lost about the things that really matter. there are real abuses of power going on all the time, i know that, but in this case, the only bad thing that could have come from taking this man's dogs away and forcing him to get some professional help would have been that maybe his feelings would have gotten hurt (with the right treatment, though, he probably would have been okay). if he were alive, maybe he would have been held accountable. instead, now he is deceased and so are many of his dogs. and in saying that, which one is truly worse?

edit: i know the article/thread is a few months old but that got me thinking about where this guy might have been had he gotten assistance. how sad.

What the fuck does that dirtbag Michael Vick have to do with anything? He has absolutely nothing to do with this case, Vick was not an animal hoarder, he was a sleezy dog fighter who got off extraordinarily light on violently abusing and killing dogs just because he can play football. There's absolutely no comparison between these cases and to imply that the people who have condemned this hoarder have forgiven Vick is so ridiculous I think you may as well have Godwin'd and called everyone saying this guy mistreated his animals(which is true no matter how mentally ill he was, it shouldn't be an excuse to hurt or neglect animals) Nazis.

i brought up michael vick because people who posted previously almost seem to be condemning this guy like he pretty much commited his crimes in the same manner. i wasn't comparing the cases, i was comparing the reactions of some of the posters. i also was NOT implying that anyone here who doesn't forgive this guy is someone who forgives vick. i said "IF you forgive vick" as opposed to "you must be someone who forgives vick". there is a huge difference. and i brought that part up because, believe it or not, there are a hell of a lot of people out there who DO forgive vick but are ready to condemn individuals such as the one in this particular case. i have actually talked to people in real life who run with that logic and it is fucking stupid beyond all comprehension. which is what i was trying to get at in the first place: get pissed about someone like vick because that's someone who wholly deserves your anger. but don't be so quick to judge this person who was probably not all there, especially when there were authorities present who were fully aware of the situation and had the power to do something but seemingly did next to nothing to better it or prevent the eventual outcome.

obviously i could have used better wording and less emotion to describe my feelings in that first paragraph, and for that i apologize. bottom line is, i just wasn't in agreeance with the animosity in the former posts and i used an extreme example to try and explain that.

as an aside, i never said mental illness is an excuse to abuse animals. what i'm trying to advocate is that people i.e. the professionals do their jobs the way they're supposed to and maybe there would be less occurences of this type. not just when it comes to animal hoarding, but also things like bullying in schools, which seems to be another largely ignored problem. better for someone to end up offended, displaced, or whatever and have the problem SOLVED than to sweep the issue under the rug and someone end up DEAD. maybe i'm the crazy one, but that's just what i think.

If this guy didn't want help, then it would have been fruitless to try to force it on him. Yes the authorities failed in this case, but I believe they failed the animals more than the person. They should have seized his animals as they were clearly being neglected to the point they were starving to death. This was a guy who was never going to get help, and as animals are "low priority" for most law enforcement agencies(something I think needs to change as people who abuse animals are likely to escalate to people so I believe there needs to be a heavier interest in such cases to prevent future tragedies), they weren't going to spend time trying to sign this dude up for therapy. I'm not sure what the legality of things are but I don't believe you can forcibly commit someone who hoards. Especially seeing how this guy apparently had no family or friends.