Are you a potential animal hoarder? Take our quiz

It seems every few weeks another story pops up about an animal hoarding case in New Jersey. 40+ dogs, 50+ cats, unmanageable conditions. We hear it all too often. These poor folks don't start out looking for this problem. These are usually kindhearted people who are trying to give love to a few too many critters and then things escalate. They sometimes have some OCD tendencies to begin with. I'm not judging. I used to have some myself.

Thinking about all this I spent some time doing extensive research consulting with animal experts to develop a questionnaire. (Okay, that was tongue firmly in cheek; I spent about 10 minutes and ran it by my wife who at one point was a dog groomer.) I came up with 7 questions and a point system to determine if you might be heading down the path toward animal hoarding.

We had some fun with this Thursday and gave the quiz to animal owners on-air. Many were fine. Some, like the lady with 18 pets, was in deep trouble. Although we probably didn't need any quiz to ascertain that. Below is the same 7 questions we had and the point value assigned to the answers. Now this was just for fun, but if you sincerely need to know more about animal hoarding from actual experts go to this link.

ANIMAL HOARDER QUESTIONNAIRE

1) How many pets do you have? (Pets are those that live inside your home but are not in cages or tanks)

If three or fewer, STOP. You are not a potential animal hoarder.
If four or more, take 1 point and move on to questions 2 through 7.

2) Were any of these pets acquired by taking in a stray?

Points Yes 1, No 0

3) Were any of these pets acquired by one house pet reproducing?

Points Yes 1, No 0

4) Do any of your social media accounts use one or more of your pets as your profile picture?

Points Animal only 2, Posing with animal 1, No 0

5) Are you single or divorced?

Points Yes 1, No 0

6) Do all of your pets have names?

Points Yes 0, No 1

7) Have you ever almost sat on, had a room taken over by, or couldn't locate a pet within your home?

Points Yes 1, No 0

Scoring:
0-2 points Not in danger of animal hoarding
3-5 points You are in danger of becoming an animal hoarder
6-8 points You are already an animal hoarder

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