Horrible conditions for the animal but obviously anyone who hoards animals has serious mental health issues themselves. That may explain the reason some of the animals were left with the person. I hope that person themselves is getting help. Poor dogs though :(

I find it disturbing that they left any dogs there at all. Disgraceful stuff really.

I am a vet, though not working as one anymore. When I was I came across quite a few situations of hoarding animals.

I could never figure out what causes some people to tip over from being ordinary animal lovers with a few pets to being hoarders. But I do know they are not always bad people. These are not the same cohort of people as puppy farmers, who are generally NOT nice people and definitely not animal lovers. They start out with the best of intentions, often to prevent the animals from being put down because no home could be found for them. They really try to keep the animals well, but it all gets out of control.

Among the most memorable was a young woman who had more than 80 cats, all living indoors, in a small house. They built up partly as a result of uncontrolled breeding, partly because she had the name of a ‘cat lover’ and was constantly finding abandoned litters of kittens just dumped on her doorstep.

This woman was a nice person, I liked her. She had a good job and seemed perfectly normal were you to meet her in an every day situation. She truly loved the cats and took care of them, after a fashion, spending every thing she earned on them They were well fed and taken to the vet if they had anything wrong with them, though were short on worming and vaccination and although she tried to keep up as new cats arrived, not all were neutered. Of course they lived in terrible and quite unacceptable surroundings – there were literally cats on every surface in every room of the house – and it is impossible to have either happy or healthy cats in such an environment. And oh the smell, the smell.

In tandem with the local SPCA, and with her (tearful) cooperation, we removed all but two neutered cats. Two years later there were 80+ again.

I truly believe this is a mental health issue, and often felt there should be some formal mechanism in place for vets to contact some kind of support services when they come across people who are behaving this way. Not just hoarders either – there are strong links between cruelty to animals and violence to other people, and those are far more distressing cases to deal with.

seems to be a huge problem but like everything else here until someone is charged with an offence why would they stop

Name and shame the Filth behind this cruelty, ban them from owning animals for life, slap them with a massive fine and or a prison sentence. It will soon stop.