Pet-Abuse.Com - Animal Abuse Case Details: Hoarding 18 dogs, multiple cats

Hoarding 18 dogs, multiple cats
Columbus, OH (US)

Incident Date: Thursday, Mar 22, 2007
County: Franklin
Local Map: available
Disposition: Alleged

Alleged: Lindsey Clouse

Case Updates: 2 update(s) available

Case ID: 11036

Classification: Hoarding

Animal: cat, dog (non pit-bull)

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Suspect was in animal welfare field

A local animal rescue worker may be in trouble for how she treated pets at her home. Investigators said they filed charges against Lindsey Clouse for what they found at her home on North Warren Avenue.

Animal control agents said that 18 dogs and multiple cats were living in what they describe as squalor, including four dogs that were left outside.

Clouse said she is a volunteer for West Side Strays, a Columbus pet rescue agency.

Agents said they are charging Clouse with seven counts of cruelty to animals.

Residents in the area said the dogs have been a problem for months.

"The animals can't be treated good. They're locked and the owner is gone for days, sometimes, and they are locked up in there," a resident said.

Clouse is scheduled to appear in court in late April.

The Capital Area Humane Society said it is considering whether to issue a search warrant to rescue the remaining dogs inside the home.

Case Updates

Authorities filed eight additional animal cruelty-related charges against a Columbus woman who runs an animal rescue organization.

Lindsey Clouse now faces a total of 46 charges.

Police raided Clouse's west Columbus home two weeks ago after neighbors complained of open doors, windows and a nauseating smell.

"If the police had not come on to this scene, these poor animals in cages would have starved," said assistant city prosecutor Bill Hedrick.

Prosecutors said Clouse runs West Side Strays.

Source: 10TV - April 6, 2007
Update posted on Apr 6, 2007 - 10:06AM

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Columbus police and animal-control agents say they are filing animal-cruelty charges against Clouse, a 25-year-old woman who apparently volunteered as an animal rescuer. They are trying to determine why someone who professed to love animals kept them in what investigators called squalor.

"From what I'd heard, she did some rescue work from her house," said David Shellhouse, field supervisor for Franklin County Animal Care and Control.

When police showed up at 71 N. Warren Ave. on Wednesday night, Clouse wasn't home and was wanted on a warrant for failing to appear in court to answer to a dog-registration charge that Shellhouse's department had issued this year.

Based on what police found at the house, they said they are charging Clouse by summons with multiple counts of animal cruelty. She could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Next-door neighbor Ron Nelson said her dogs have knocked down his back fence, and the odor from her yard made him embarrassed to invite friends over. Clouse would leave the dogs in cages and disappear for days, Nelson said. "She said she tries to place the animals with people."

On Wednesday night, he called police after howling dogs pushed the screen out of an open front window; he feared they would jump out.

Police reported they could hear howling and smell urine and feces as they pulled up. They called animal-control agents. Together, they counted 18 dogs.

Four dogs outside were seized, but others were left inside because investigators couldn't enter without a warrant.

In a report, the police sergeant who was there said that Becky Shope, a deputy dog warden, knew Clouse's name because of her rescue work. Shope told police that, given the evidence in front of them, she thought "Clouse was using her position � to gain pit bull dogs, and then was breeding them at this location."

Shellhouse said his office is filing charges that include failing to license the seized dogs and failing to confine vicious dogs.

The Capital Area Humane Society is trying to determine what relationship, if any, it had with Clouse, Executive Director Jodi Buckman said. Clouse was not an employee, she said, but the agency hadn't determined whether it had placed animals with her, either directly or through an intermediary agency.

"We tend to only place animals with agencies that we have a direct relationship with � or with individuals that we trust," Buckman said.

But such reports, she said, drive home a problem humane societies face: a lack of regulation and oversight of people who declare themselves volunteer animal rescuers.

Many are sincere and reputable; others mean well but get in over their heads, Buckman said. Still others might hoard animals because of mental illness.

"We absolutely believe there should be regulations," she said. "It's a tangled web. There are a lot of individuals involved in this work."

Source: Columbus Dispatch - March 23, 2007
Update posted on Mar 23, 2007 - 10:38PM

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NBC 4 - March 22, 2007

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Hoarding 18 dogs, multiple catsColumbus, OH (US)

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Hoarding 18 dogs, multiple cats
Columbus, OH (US)