ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — After 12 hours of sifting through dead animal carcasses and coaxing dozens of sickly exotic pets into cages so they could be rescued from a home in Macungie, Barbara Morgan’s head ached and her throat felt tight.

It was a familiar feeling. Just two weeks before, Morgan, the Lehigh County Humane Society’s police officer, had spent a night trudging through dog feces while comforting 65 emaciated beagles that were removed from a squalid Upper Saucon Township home.

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The animals in both homes were terrified, and the beagles’ owner was so distraught that he threatened suicide as Morgan and others tried to persuade him to surrender his pets. Throughout both assignments, Morgan remained stoic, methodically corralling animals into crates and cataloging details for her abuse investigation.

“I turned off my emotions,” she said. “Of course, sometime in the near future I’ll have a breakdown and start crying for no reason.”

Morgan’s reaction is not unusual. Stress is rampant in the animal welfare community, and it often goes untreated. And while horrific hoarding cases can push animal rescuers to the brink, it’s more likely the everyday trauma of trying to save a never-ending stream of abused and abandoned animals that can lead to a mental health crisis.

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People within the animal welfare community are finally starting to recognize that compassion fatigue is a serious problem.

— Jennifer Blough, author of book on rescue workers

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“More and more, I think that organizations are realizing the consequences that animal welfare work is having on staff and volunteers,” said Michigan therapist Jennifer Blough, who authored a book on the emotional impact of animal rescue work.

“People within the animal welfare community are finally starting to recognize that compassion fatigue is a serious problem,” she said. “Years ago, it wasn’t talked about at all. We kept our emotions to ourselves.”

Compassion fatigue, sometimes called vicarious traumatization, manifests itself in many forms, Blough said, including anxiety, sleep problems, nightmares or flashbacks, substance abuse and even thoughts of suicide.

A 2015 study by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that animal rescue workers have a suicide rate of 5.3 in 1 million workers, the highest suicide rate among American employees and a rate shared only by firefighters and police officers.

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But unlike police and fire departments, which increasingly have mental health professionals on call to counsel first responders involved in traumatic events like last month’s fatal car explosion in Allentown, animal rescuers are often on their own when it comes to dealing with trauma.

“I vent regularly to my mom,” said shelter worker Jackie Folsom, who spent hours alongside other rescuers Monday night pulling dozens of creatures — snakes, parrots, pigs, rats and other animals — from the Macungie home. “It’s hard for her to hear all these things, but I need to talk about it.”

Though statistics on hoarding are hard to find, some think social media is fueling a rise in the behavior. Animal welfare groups call this “rescue hoarding,” said Kimberley Alboum, shelter outreach and policy engagement director of The Humane Society of the United States.

“Facebook is filled with posts begging people to take in pets before they get sent to a shelter where they will supposedly be put down. Hoarders are responding to these posts,” Alboum said.

The beagles’ owner was charged by the state with violating dog law, and an investigation is underway in the case of the Magungie home. The couple who lived at that property were linked to a second home in Montgomery County on Thursday, where investigators found 240 neglected animals, including snakes and giant tortoises.

Criminal charges could take weeks or months, Morgan said. Investigators will look at whether the couple was breeding or selling animals, or just taking in more than they could handle due to a compulsion, she said.

That’s the question in the case of Derbe Eckhart, an Upper Milford man awaiting trial on felony animal cruelty charges for allegedly neglecting dozens of animals. Prosecutors say Eckhart, who was convicted of identical charges a decade ago and spent 10 months in jail, was breeding animals and skimping on food and veterinary care to maximize profit. Eckhart’s lawyer has not yet said what his defense will be.

In only two states — Hawaii and Illinois — is there a crime called animal hoarding. Pennsylvania and other states rely on animal neglect and cruelty statutes that punish people for failing to provide adequate food, water and veterinary care.

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Imagine how hard it is to a see a sweet old dog brought in by its owner who can no longer take care of it.

— Kimberley Alboum of the The Humane Society of the United States

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Diane Balkin, a senior staff attorney for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, said there’s no way to know if hoarding cases are on the rise, but her agency is seeing an increase in awareness, due in part to news coverage of cases like the 65 beagles in Upper Saucon and the menagerie removed from the Macungie residence.

“People now realize that a hoarding situation is a fate worse than death for animals,” Balkin said.

Empathetic animal rescuers must guard against becoming hoarders themselves. Folsom, the Lehigh County Humane Society’s community outreach coordinator, has seven pets, all but one adopted from the shelter. Most of her co-workers have several pets as well, she noted, usually dogs or cats with special needs, or animals that have been overlooked by traditional adopters.

“We all take animals home,” Folsom said. “I foster litters of kittens that come in all the time, and sometimes it’s really hard to give them up.”

Though hoarding cases can be trying for shelter workers, Alboum also said that it’s the daily work that takes the greatest toll.

“Imagine how hard it is to a see a sweet old dog brought in by its owner who can no longer take care of it,” Alboum said. “The owner walks out the door and the dog is left behind for the staff to deal with. That’s hard on the soul.”

Morgan, who served 20 years as a Northampton County prison guard before switching to animal law enforcement, said she relies heavily on the suicide prevention training she received while working at the jail to get her through rough moments.

“I learned that it’s really important to talk about it,” she said. “You really should get it out.”

The Lehigh County Humane Society does not have a counseling program in place for its workers, said Mary Shafer, the nonprofit’s executive director.

“We talk to each other,” she said.

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It’s hard. You know for this one animal that’s being rescued there’s so many more that are not being rescued.

— Jackie Folsom, animal shelter worker

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Authorities rescued at least 240 animals from a home on the 1100 block of Station Road in Upper Hanover Township, including more than 100 snakes, as well as several alligators, ferrets, skunks, turtles and at least half a dozen guinea pigs.

But nationwide, more shelters and rescue groups are starting to bring in counselors, or are launching support groups to help workers cope, said Blough, the author from Michigan. One of the most important things shelters can do is to encourage their staff to practice self-care.

“The problem is that sometimes you can give so much to others that you have nothing left to give to yourself,” Blough said. “It’s imperative to take time to recharge your battery and engage in nonanimal or nonhelping activities and hobbies.”

According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, approximately 6.5 million pets are taken in by animal shelters every year. About 1.5 million of these animals are euthanized, though that number has decreased from about 2.6 million in 2011.

That means many shelter employees, who likely got into the profession because of a deep desire to help animals, find themselves forced to make life-and-death decisions.

“And they get criticized relentlessly for it, which is unfair,” Alboum said. “No one in this field wants to euthanize animals, and we’ve come a long way in this country to bring euthanasia rates down. But shelters rarely get credit for that.”

Folsom agreed that it’s not animals that upset her the most some days. It’s humans. Calming distraught people who don’t want to lose their pets, or reading hateful media posts can leave her in tears at the end of the day.

“The Facebook warriors come after us. They don’t know how hard we work, but they say really bad things about us. And it’s really discouraging,” she said.

After only a few hours of sleep following the raid at the home in Macungie, Folsom was back at the Humane Society early Tuesday morning. The lobby and hallways were jammed with cages of squawking parrots and macaws. Visitors — ignoring the sign on the door that said the shelter was closed — crowded around the front desk to ask about adopting the new arrivals.

Folsom smiled as she inspected a cage of birds, but admitted she would likely feel sad later.

“It’s hard,” she said. “You know for this one animal that’s being rescued, there’s so many more that are not being rescued. It just feels like a drop in the bucket sometimes.”

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Animal lover or hoarder?

The Humane Society of the United States defines hoarding as having more than the typical number of companion animals; an inability to provide even minimal standards of nutrition, sanitation, shelter and veterinary care, with this neglect often resulting in starvation, illness and death for companion animals; and the denial of both the inability to provide this minimum care and the impact of that failure on the animals, the household and the human occupants of the home.

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Online:

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Information from: The Morning Call, http://www.mcall.com