According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 71% of pet owning women entering shelters reported that their abuser threatened or harmed family pets.
Rose Brooks is a domestic violence shelter in Kansas City that has been operating a pet shelter and pet-friendly housing in their facility since 2012.
Recently, the organization has worked with Wayside Waifs, an area animal rescue, and the K-State College of Veterinary Medicine to provide preventative health care to pets in Rose Brooks' facility, such as immunizations, check-ups and more.
Fleming spoke with Casey Waugh of Wayside Waifs about their partnership and how they’re working to protecting families — and pets impacted by domestic violence.
For the month of April, we’re focusing on the stories of those working to combat domestic and sexual violence in Missouri.
Lisa Fleming: At its core, domestic violence is about power and control. We see a great crossover between where there is domestic violence, where it's one adult partner battering their partner — that you might also find that intersection of child abuse and pet abuse.
Similar to dynamics of parent control that happened with adults, where the abusive partner denies them medical care or preventative health, we were finding the same thing with pets.
One of the first pet families that came into our shelter — on a nightly basis, she was sleeping in her closet with her dog in order to protect her dog, and that was over a month's time that she was she was doing that.
So, it's such a strong bond, and something that we — just when we are thinking about, “How do we break the cycle of domestic violence so that individuals and families can live free of abuse?” There was just no way that we could not accept pets into our shelter and into our housing program.
Casey Waugh: So, we've always been here to help the pets, and we've had this long-term relationship and been able to help families in crisis and provide temporary shelter for these animals, while maybe their owners had to get safety.
But recently, we really formed this partnership that allowed all of us to really embrace and focus on that need and really help both the pets and the people move forward, have a better life, get medical needs addressed — whatever their situation is.
Because every human, every soul on [sic] this planet, is different and need different things. And it's really a great thing to see animals being cared for because it recognizes the importance of the animal, but it also gives dignity to the humans.
A lot of outreach is just seen as kind of treating the human as maybe they're a little bit lesser, and that's not at all how we see it. That's not how we want it to be perceived. We want people to acknowledge that they are — we're all equals. That's how I should say it.
We're all, obviously, we're all equals, and so, when we have these clinics with Rose Brooks, for example, it's about that partnership between Wayside and Rose Brooks, but also how the humans are being treated.
They get to go and have a conversation with a veterinarian —just like anybody else would go to their paying veterinarian, as they deserve to, and that's how it should be.
So, you know, we want to offer that dignity to everyone involved and really build that relationship, so it's not transactional. It's not about, “Okay, we're going to spay your dog or we're going to vaccinate your cat and then be done.” We want to build a relationship there.
