WESTERLO — A Westerlo woman has been charged with animal cruelty by the Albany County Sheriff’s Office. But the 64-year-old woman alleges that she is simply a misunderstood farmer and dog breeder at the whim of an angry neighbor.

Tanja Morse was charged Thursday with three counts of failure to provide sustenance, a misdemeanor, in violation of New York State Agriculture and Markets Law.

The sheriff’s office reported that it received an anonymous tip on Wednesday of animals living in inadequate conditions. A search warrant was executed on Thursday at Morse’s home on 646 Route 401 by the Sheriff’s Criminal Investigations Unit and the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society. A veterinarian from the Ravena-based equine clinic Oakencroft was there as well.

The group found 56 dogs, 27 chickens, 16 horse, one llama, and 27 goats, according to the sheriff’s office. Morse voluntarily turned over 16 of her dogs to the humane society and seven horses, her goats, and her llama to the sheriff’s office. The rest of her animals remain at her home, but are seized in place by the sheriff’s office.

The animals were living in “deplorable conditions,” the sheriff’s office said in a release.

Hoarding

Animal rescue operations that become the site of hoarding animals generally depend on a change in the quality of life that cause the animal to suffer, said Dr. Randall Lockwood, a psychologist working on anti-cruelty projects at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Animal hoarders span demographics, said Lockwood, but most commonly are single women in their 40s or 50s. Locally, two other cases — one in Feura Bush and the other in Berne — have involved middle-aged women charged with animal cruelty.

Hoarding is a psychological disorder — an anxiety — that is often accompanied by other mental conditions, Lockwood said. Hoarding, including animal hoarding, is recognized as a mental illness in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

With that in mind, a case of hoarding is not simply resolved by taking animals away, he said. Rather it requires treatment and observation. A program in New York City run by the ASPCA has social workers on staff for this reason, he said.

Animal hoarders typically believe only they can care for their animals, said Lockwood, and are not willing to give them up. In the case of breeders, who are willing to sell their animals, abuse and neglect is typically driven by greed in not spending enough to properly care for the animals, he said.

Lockwood noted that hoarders will often overlook problems that their animals are enduring, or excuse the issues as something only appeared recently due to a short-term problem — such as saying a large tumor only appeared yesterday, or that an animal was starved because it missed a feeding for one day.

He added that investigators are trained to find these severe problems, and are not responding to overreactions.

“Just being a little dirty is not going to lead to criminal charges,” he said.

Morse’s view

According to Morse, the arrest was incited when her 33-year-old Arabian mare wandered onto her neighbor’s lawn in search of shorter, more palatable grass for her aging teeth (horses typically live up to 30 years).

“She’s like a pet, a dog,” said Morse, of her mare.

In response to this, her neighbor, who Morse said she has had disputes with before, called the sheriff’s office, she said.

She said the sheriff’s report was inaccurate, saying that the only ill animals on her property were a goat with a crippled foot and her mare, which she said began losing weight a few years ago. She also said the number of dogs the sheriff’s office reported was wrong, that she had 30 including two litters of puppies.

According to Morse, she also has 28 goats, 12 horses, a llama, chickens, pigeons, and a peacock.

“I thought everybody was fine,” she said, of the animals’ conditions.

Morse said she was handcuffed and brought to the sheriff’s Clarksville station, where she was shackled to a bench while waiting to be fingerprinted.

“I felt very violated,” she said.

Morse said the incident will likely lead to her paying a high-priced attorney’s fee, and that it has already damaged her reputation.

She also said the disruption upset her animals, causing her dogs and mare to have digestive issues due to a changed feeding schedule because of her absence, and to have the disturbed pigeons abandon some of their babies, a few of which she found dead.

Morse said she has bred goats for 15 years, and has bred dogs for 40.

“You don’t make much money — it’s a labor of love,” she said, of breeding dogs.

The dogs, she said, typically have free rein of the house during the day, but that on Thursday she had moved them to the crates that they normally sleep in at night out of fear of how they would react around strangers.

Morse also runs a farm, and said she had taken on rescue animals — like her mare, which she got 13 years ago.

She said the costs of operating her farm and caring for her dogs can run high.

“My hay is about $150 a week,” she said. “Not including my grain, and my dog food, and my de-wormers, and vaccines.”

She said she works part-time, her husband and daughter work as well, in part to fund the costs of caring for the animals.

Morse sells the dogs she raises, outside of a few she personally owns, and said she did not mind the humane society taking several of her dogs, provided they go to good homes. She was, however, adamant about keeping her other animals.

“I’m not letting them take my horses,” she said. “And I’m not letting them take my house dogs, my companions.”

Morse said she felt that breeders and farmers were at risk of losing their freedom and choices, and lamented that she didn’t live even further out in the country, away from people.

“I like dogs and animals more than I like people, to be honest with you,” she said.

Morse is scheduled to appear in Westerlo Town Court on Aug. 9. She said she is not sure how she will plea, and intends to speak with a lawyer on the matter.