Each pet requires numerous care and a lot of attention. Therefore, it is not always a good idea to have too many animals at home, because excessive accumulation can negatively affect both the well-being of the pet and that of its owners, according to a recent study from Mississippi State University (MSU, for its acronym in English).
Joint research by faculty members in the Department of Veterinary Psychology and Medicine revealed that animals in households with eight or more animals were associated with poorer health, likely due to owners owning more pets than they can adequately handle.
“Although most people with hoarding disorder hoard items, for some people their main problem is having more animals than they can care for,” explains Mary E. Dozier, an assistant professor in the MSU Department of Psychology. Dozier notes that they wanted to see if there were any “normative patterns of animal ownership, particularly in a rural setting, and if there were any trends that we could discover related to animal health.”
To reach that conclusion, the researchers did a retrospective review of veterinary medical records from 2009 to 2019 from a university community clinic in Mississippi. Specifically, data from owners who reported having animals from a household with an average of eight or more animals, excluding shelters or protectors. A search was made taking into account the number of canine and feline animals per household and animal health indicators, both positive and negative.
In their results, published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, the researchers found that increased household animal ownership was correlated with poorer health outcomes, according to health care indicators investigated in canines and felines.
The authors link these results to owners owning more animals than they can adequately handle. In addition, they caution 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 animals as for themselves.
In their conclusions, the researchers hope the study will serve to establish early warning systems: “Veterinarians working in community settings are likely to encounter instances of animal hoarding and should consider collaborating with mental health professionals if it occurs.” Repeated incidents of negative health care indicators for animals in the same household”.
