Story and photos by Julie Carasone
Restore Sexual Assault Services held their first dog walk for Domestic Violence Awareness Month at Village Park in Warsaw on Saturday.
“Paws for a Purpose”, a free event for pups and parents, provided information on domestic violence and pet abuse. The event also featured a dog walk.
Lauren Berger, Training Coordinator for Restore Sexual Assault Services, says the idea for a dog walk was born when organizers were trying think of something that was new and different and outside the box.
“Getting folks out to not only see our information, but to see how these two issues are not so separate,” says Berger.
“When we can engage people in a light hearted way, they are much more engaged. Domestic violence is a somber concept, it’s very sad and lots of times we are talking about someone that has been harmed or killed, and if we can marry it with something like dog walking and all these kind of fun things, we can get people to have fun and take away some of that serious and purposeful information as well,” says Berger.
“We have seen in our work, working with clients and working with experts that pets are a component when engaging in power control, it often impacts the whole house, so if there are pets in the house, it will impact them too. We have seen it as a barrier to when people are looking to escape their situation, they will say, “I cannot go anywhere, because I cannot take a dog” or “If I leave, he says he will kill the cat” and so those are real barriers to people leaving.”
Officially in the GLOW region, there is not a structure to bring animals to in a domestic violence situation.
Having connections with the Wyoming County SPCA, the animal shelter in Attica, and Red Rover, Berger hopes they can assist with options for a domestic violence situation.
“The more people start to learn about this, maybe they can start using their own personal connections because it can be less stressful for the animal and they can say that this is important to take an animal for their sister or friend and if their friend can understand the rationale, they may be more apt to take the animal.”
For more information or if you or someone you know needs help: contact Restore Sexual Assault Services for the GLOW region at 1-800-527-1757 or their website is RESTOREsas.org
For more information on pets and domestic violence, you can go to https://redrover.org/