if there are any dog breed rescue PTers in northern Illinois...

This is so sad. If anyone out there knows of a pure bred rescue organization you might want to have them call this shelter.

Dehydrated, malnourished animals seized from rural Illinois home
Associated Press
7:13 PM CDT, October 14, 2007

ROCHELLE, Ill. - Authorities seized more than 230 dogs, cats and birds over the weekend from a rural home in northwestern Illinois, and have charged their owner with animal cruelty.

Some animals were kept in cars, and many were dehydrated and malnourished; several carcasses were also found around the property of the ranch-style house, animal welfare officials said.

"From the animals we've seen, they appear to have been given minimal amount of care," said Regina Harris of the TAILS Humane Society. "Many appear to have been forgotten."

Their owner, 65-year-old Barbara C. Munroe of Rochelle, was in the Lee County jail on Sunday after being charged Friday with several misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty and failure of owner's duty. She was being held on $35,000 bond.

There was no telephone listing for a Barbara Munroe in Rochelle. And the Lee County sheriff's office on Sunday didn't know if Munroe yet had an attorney.

Animal Control official Jack Nicklaus said he believes Munroe meant to care for the animals.

"I think she had good intentions, but it just got out of control," he said.

Many of the dogs are purebreds, including bloodhounds, huskies and basset hounds, said Lee County Assistant State's Attorney Andrew Bollman.

"There is easily about $100,000 in animals here," he said.

The animals, seized on Saturday, have been taken to a temporary shelter run by the TAILS Humane Society in DeKalb. Authorities searched the home Thursday after Munroe failed to bring 35 of her dogs in for a rabies vaccination.

Munroe was scheduled to appear in court on Monday.

Here is their contact information:
(815) 75.TAILS (758-2457)
[email protected]

Here's their Web site with some photos ... they're pretty upsetting though
http://www.tailshumanesociety.org/main.asp?id=27

===> Bump

Woman accused of hoarding pets sent to hospital for psychiatric tests
Judge to rule on fate of 300 animals taken from woman's home

Tribune staff report
October 17, 2007

A woman accused of hoarding 300 living and 200 dead animals in her rural home west of DeKalb has been sent to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation, officials said Tuesday.

Barbara Munroe, 65, of Rochelle, was transferred from the Lee County Jail late Monday, Lee County Assistant State's Atty. Andrew Bollman said.

Prosecutors had asked a judge to grant an emergency petition to have her committed.

Within five days, Munroe will return to court, and a judge will rule whether she should continue to be committed or be released, Bollman said. If she is released, Munroe will return to jail because she has not posted a $35,000 bail.

"We are concerned for her welfare," Bollman said. "Obviously, there are mental and physical concerns."

Prosecutors also are asking a judge to confiscate Munroe's animals so the TAILS Humane Society in DeKalb can offer them for adoption. Bollman said he expects the judge to rule on the fate of about 160 cats, 105 dogs and 35 birds within about 10 days.

Most of the animals are still being cared for in a makeshift shelter at Taylor Municipal Airport in DeKalb, TAILS Executive Director Beth Drake said Tuesday.

Some will be released to breed-rescue groups for foster care, and others will continue to be cared for at the airport, she said.

If a judge strips Munroe of ownership, the humane society will start offering the animals for adoption, she said.

Lee County Animal Control officials discovered the animals last week when they were investigating why 35 of Munroe's dogs had not gotten rabies vaccinations, officials said.

Munroe had let the animals take over the house while she slept on her porch atop a plastic storage bin containing dead cats, authorities have said.

Good heavens! I can't imagine working on that rescue. I'd be in tears the whole time.

Those pets are on the road to a better future, now. Prayers for all of them and the workers caring for them. I saw the long list of helpers involved, PetCo and PetsSmart Groomers. My gosh, how do you even start when you have to coordinate something like that!

OMG!! :eek: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

The before pictures are heartbreaking... but make sure you look at the updated pictures, they all look SO happy!! They know they were saved!! :)

:eek: Why in the world did it take so long for someone to step in? Sad for the animals, and sad for the woman, too. She needs help, poor soul.
Angie, you're right, the up-dated photos are wonderful. :)

http://www.saukvalley.com/articles/2...5080757450.txt

Published on: Sunday, November 04, 2007
County hamstrung without hoarding restrictions
Agencies found they were powerless to act as animals multiplied

BY SAM SMITH
SVS REPORTER
ssmithATsvnmailDOTcom

When Lee County Sheriff's deputies arrested Barbara Munroe and charged her with the neglect of hundreds of cats, dogs and birds kept at her rural home, it was the second time in four years such a thing had occurred in Lee County.

In December 2003, the Illinois Department of Agriculture, the Lee County Animal Control Department and several other agencies removed about 200 dogs from a rural Amboy location on Sleepy Hollow Road. The animals were transported to various agencies for treatment of malnutrition and other conditions. Many others were euthanized.

At that time, county officials knew Barbara Munroe's name. They also knew she had a relatively large number of animals.

In 1998, when Munroe bought her property in Reynolds Township south of Rochelle, former Lee County Animal Control officer Dee Duffy helped her through the paperwork of registering her animals with the county.

Duffy estimated that Munroe had about 35 animals at the time.

When the county moved in on Munroe's property last month, the numbers dwarfed the Amboy case of Tiffany McCoy - 106 dogs, 160 cats and 31 birds were seized from Munroe's property, and another 200 cat carcasses, along with a couple of dead dogs.

So could the county have intervened before Munroe's animal collection grew out off hand?

Although the horrific conditions surrounding McCoy's arrest put the county on edge about Munroe, Lee County Animal Control Supervisor Nancy Cullen said her department could not demand entry into Munroe's home without a search warrant, and to obtain the warrant she needed probable cause to believe Munroe was violating a law.

While Animal Control suspected things were not going well inside Munroe's home, Cullen and other county officials felt hamstrung without any state or local law preventing the collection of a large number of animals.

Isn't there a law?

Long before Munroe moved to northeastern Lee County and began collecting her menagerie of companion animals, she had previous brushes with the law over animals while living in two locations in Will County.

One location was governed by an ordinance restricting the number of dogs a resident could own. The other was not.

Will County Administrator of Animal Control Dr. Leroy Schild said Munroe moved from her home in Joliet to a family home in unincorporated Plainfield after zoning officers found her in violation of the Joliet ordinance restricting the number of dogs per household to five.

In rural Plainfield, as in unincorporated Lee County, there is no such restriction.

About the only hard and fast rules are that dogs must be vaccinated and registered, and dog owners can have no more than five breedable females without a required kennel operator's license. As long as her dogs were vaccinated and registered with county officials, Munroe could keep as many as she liked.

Schild said the simple regulations are there by design. Counties want to make it as easy as possible for dog owners to comply.

"The last thing you want is the alternative where people just don't register at all," Schild said. "It's our goal to have as many animals compliant as possible from a public health standpoint."

Cullen wonders whether there's a middle ground - something that makes it easier for her to obtain a search warrant, or something that gives her office the authority to intervene with suspicious homes before they reach dereliction.

In 2001, Illinois became the first state to pass a law directly addressing animal hoarding. It provides a definition of an animal hoarder, puts an emphasis on psychiatric treatment for the accused and includes sentencing guidelines that encourage judges to prohibit convicted hoarders from ever owning another pet.

Although the 2001 Illinois law provides clearer direction to the criminal justice system in handling cases once authorities have discovered them, the state statute does not give authorities any greater opportunities to sniff out potential hoarders before things get out of hand.

That's up to local municipalities and counties to decide for themselves.

Cat and mouse

Lee County Animal Control employees, Sheriff's deputies and Environmental Health inspectors had all made several house calls to Munroe over nearly 10 years.

Neighbors complained about noise and sanitation. Dogs occasionally escaped their pens, rats scuttled across the road, and Munroe became increasingly withdrawn in the months leading up to her arrest.

"There were a lot of red flags ... ," Cullen said.

Munroe could not care for the hundreds of animals on her own, so she hired kennel assistants and local teenagers to help her purchase and feed the animals 200 pounds of food every day.

Turnover on part-time help was high, and Cullen said chance encounters with kennel assistants confirmed what she suspected about Munroe: "You could tell there was something not right about her ... but she would never let anyone in her house, not even friends," Cullen said.

"I would ask her, 'Hey Barb, you got any dogs in the house?' because I thought she had some in there ... Turns out she'd been doing this for a long time," Cullen said.

The same was true of Environmental Health officials. In 2003, Environmental Health answered a complaint about mounds of trash and filthy clothing that piled up in Munroe's front yard. They went to the property to insist she remove the garbage. Munroe cleaned up her yard, and officials backed off.

Another complaint came a year later, and the cat-and-mouse scenario replayed itself.

Much like Animal Control attempted to help Munroe keep up with the vaccination and veterinary care of her animals, Environmental Health Director Tim Trader worked with Munroe to help keep her and her property in the best shape they could.

"Things had been moving in a positive direction for a long time," Trader said, but there are legal restrictions on how far Environmental Health could impose on Munroe, while civil liberties concerns kept both agencies from prying their way into Munroe's home.

"There weren't children in the home ... The person is making a choice to live a certain way, and it's something you and I might not understand, but you have to work with them as best you can," Trader said. "This is something we can all learn from, so we can try to avoid something like this in the future."

Reach Sam Smith at (815) 284-2222, (815) 625-3600 or (800) 798-4085, ext. 525.

Copyright © 2007 Sauk Valley Newspapers - All Rights Reserved

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TRIBUNE UPDATE
Adoption day for seized animals
After weeks in shelter's care, the adoption of scores of dogs, cats and birds removed by authorities from a woman's Rochelle farmhouse puts happy ending on animal hoarding case

By Gary Gibula | Special to the Tribune
November 4, 2007

Although most of the dogs, cats and birds Barbara Munroe kept in her rural Rochelle farmhouse were unhealthy and in need of attention, many of them found caring homes Saturday in the city of DeKalb.

"There were some sad stories with some of the pets here, but today is a very positive day," said Carolyn Law, public relations director for Taking Animals Into Loving Shelter, a northern Illinois non-profit organization that helped set up Saturday's adoption event under two tents in a pet store parking lot. "It's a strong message that it's really important for us to value these animals."

Officials raided Munroe's dilapidated Lee County home nearly three weeks ago and seized roughly 160 cats, 106 dogs and 31 birds that were being kept in unhealthy conditions. Munroe is accused of hoarding those pets, along with about 200 dead animals.

The live animals were immediately moved to a hangar at the DeKalb airport and, after Munroe surrendered ownership to the local Humane Society, the animals have been under the care of TAILS volunteers.

Law said that during the last three weeks, more than 700 people helped walk the dogs, feed the cats and provide temporary human companionship and that "not everyone who is a volunteer necessarily wants to adopt one of the pets."

"She was very shy and depressed, but she came out of it quickly," said volunteer Glenda Flower of a puppy she adopted Saturday. "She's gonna be a wonderful addition to our family."

TAILS works in cooperation with the Anti-Cruelty Society of Chicago, providing pets for adoption.

Law said that in one day, the Anti-Cruelty Society picked up 40 of Munroe's cats and dogs, spayed or neutered them in Chicago and then returned the animals to DeKalb, free of charge.

TAILS board member Sue Christensen said they expected all the dogs to be adopted Saturday. Animals that are not adopted will go to a no-kill shelter in DeKalb.

Munroe, 65, is facing 10 misdemeanor charges relating to mistreatment of animals. She was arrested Oct. 12 after county investigators found her to be keeping the animals in a home littered with garbage, decaying cat carcasses and animal waste. Authorities said Munroe was sleeping on her front porch atop a plastic storage bin that held dead cats.

Officials said the case appears to be one of the state's largest cases of animal hoarding, a mental illness usually linked to obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression or anxiety.

Christensen said officials found various dog and cat medications in Munroe's home that had not been dispensed to the animals.

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

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