For someone fleeing an abusive home, the decision to leave can come with an impossible question: What happens to my pet?
Abusers may threaten, harm, or use animals as leverage to maintain control. For someone who fears what will happen to a beloved pet left behind, leaving may not feel like an option at all.
Two shelter veterinarians in Ontario believe their profession can help change that.
Drs. Sarah and Jill Kirk, a mother-daughter team with decades of shelter medicine experience between them, provide veterinary care to pets staying with their owners in gender-based violence shelters. Their new nonprofit, Purple Whiskers Shelter Support, has a larger goal: helping more shelters overcome the barriers that prevent them from welcoming pets and making it easier for survivors to leave with their entire family.
“We have to help the shelters say yes,” Sarah said.
Research underscores how significant that barrier can be. A review of 12 studies found that between 18% and 48% of domestic violence victims delayed leaving an abusive situation or returned to an abuser out of fear for their pets’ welfare. Other research has found that as many as 89% of pet-owning women entering domestic violence shelters reported that an abuser had injured, killed, or threatened a family pet.
Seeing the connection
The idea behind Purple Whiskers had been taking shape for years.
Sarah spent much of her veterinary career working in animal shelters and served as an adjunct professor in the UF Shelter Medicine Program as well as medical director of the ASPCA Field Investigation and Response team, where she encountered animals who were victims of large-scale cruelty and neglect.
But while earning her Master of Science in Veterinary Medical Sciences from the University of Florida in 2017, coursework on the relationship between animal abuse and interpersonal violence changed the way she thought about those cases.
As veterinarians, Sarah said, “animals are often the first victim or the victim that we see.” The question is what else may be happening in the household.
“Are there children? Are there elderly? Who’s standing in front of you? What’s the story?”
Jill had a similar experience. A 2014 graduate of the UF College of Veterinary Medicine, she earned the Professional Certificate in Shelter Medicine as a veterinary student and later returned to complete a Master of Science in Shelter Medicine and Certificate in Veterinary Forensics.
The education taught her to look beyond an animal’s injury and ask questions that veterinarians may not always think to ask.
“If an animal comes in with a broken leg, it’s often, ‘OK, we can fix this,’” Jill said. “But sometimes the questions aren’t asked: ‘Well, how did this break happen?’”
Those lessons stayed with both veterinarians.
A way to help
After moving to Ontario in late 2022, Sarah repeatedly encountered the name Gillian’s Place, a gender-based violence shelter in her community. Curious, she looked at the organization’s annual report and discovered one of its goals was to become pet-friendly.
Suddenly, the connection between her education, her career in shelter medicine, and an unmet community need became clear.
“Aha,” she remembers thinking. “Now I can finally help.”
Sarah contacted the organization and offered her expertise. Jill joined her, and in August 2025 the two began providing veterinary care to pets at Gillian’s Place.
What initially seemed like a volunteer project at a single shelter quickly grew into something more ambitious. The Kirks realized the model could be replicated, helping other gender-based violence shelters address some of the practical concerns that can make accommodating pets difficult.
They created Purple Whiskers Shelter Support, which received nonprofit status in April 2026. Its mission is to encourage pet-friendly housing in gender-based violence shelters by protecting human and animal health through timely, affordable veterinary care.
The organization is already working with a second shelter, Birchway Niagara, and Sarah is in discussions with another organization in the Hamilton area.
Bringing veterinary care to safety
The veterinary medicine itself is intentionally straightforward.
When a client arrives at a participating shelter with a pet, Purple Whiskers tries to see them within 48 hours. Sarah and Jill travel to the shelter rather than requiring the client to arrange transportation to a veterinary clinic.
They perform an examination, administer needed vaccines and parasite prevention, review whatever medical history is available, and consider behavioral and public health concerns. If the client and pet remain at the shelter, the veterinarians return as needed for follow-up care.
That relatively simple intervention can remove several barriers at once.
The shelter doesn’t have to arrange transportation or wait weeks for an outside veterinary appointment. Veterinary care becomes substantially less expensive. Vaccination and parasite control help address health concerns associated with having animals in communal housing. And clients who may have fled home with little more than their pets don’t have to navigate another complicated system at an already overwhelming moment.
For the animals, the effects of escaping violence can sometimes be visible.
Jill remembers meeting one woman who arrived at a shelter with several children and pets. The first veterinary visit was chaotic. The children were unsettled, the animals were stressed, and everyone was trying to adjust to a world that had suddenly changed.
When Sarah and Jill returned a month later, the difference was striking.
“The animals were calmer, the children were calmer, the woman was calmer,” Jill said. “It was so nice to see.”
For the first time, it seemed, the family could simply “breathe and exist.”
More than an individual patient
That experience illustrates why shelter veterinarians may be particularly well positioned to contribute to this work.
Shelter medicine asks veterinarians to think beyond a single patient: to consider population health, infectious disease, behavior, public health, available resources, access to care, and the systems surrounding both animals and people.
In the context of domestic violence, that wider lens matters.
Sarah recalls examining one pet whose eyes remained fixed on its owner throughout the visit. The animal seemed acutely attuned to every change in the room, reinforcing for her how deeply animals can be affected by what happens in a violent household, and how important it can be for people and pets to remain together once they reach safety.
“This work really is very simple, very small work in one sense,” Sarah said, “but the impact is so large.”
Purple Whiskers has so far cared for 20 pets over 36 veterinary visits. The numbers are modest, but Sarah sees the program as a model rather than simply a service. She hopes veterinarians elsewhere will consider how similar partnerships might work in their own communities.
“This work is really important, and it can be replicated,” she said.
Expanding what shelter medicine can do
Both Kirks credit their shelter medicine education at UF with introducing them to the connection between animal abuse and interpersonal violence.
Jill believes that education is important even for veterinarians who never work in shelters or become involved in a program like Purple Whiskers.
Veterinarians need to understand that non-accidental injury exists, she said, recognize when something about a case raises concern, and know what steps to take next.
Sarah hopes to help put that connection on the radar of future veterinarians in Canada, just as it was put on hers. Purple Whiskers has a board member affiliated with the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph, and Sarah hopes there will eventually be opportunities to introduce students to the work.
“While the veterinary students at OVC are being taught about forensics and the link between animal abuse and interpersonal violence, I would love to see that instruction expand to include providing care to the pet survivors so that they may be co-housed with their people,” she said.
For now, Sarah and Jill are building carefully. Gillian’s Place is expected to open a new pet-friendly wing, and Birchway Niagara is planning seven pet-friendly rooms of its own.
Sarah hopes veterinary support can make it easier for still more gender-based violence shelters to take that step.
Because for someone answering the phone when a person in danger asks whether they can bring their pet, the difference between “no” and “yes” can be far greater than finding a place for an animal.
It can remove one more obstacle to reaching safety.
“The best people to take care of a pet are the pet’s people,” Sarah said. “We have to help shelters say yes.”
Learn more about Purple Whiskers Shelter Support, including how to support their work.
Learn more about the University of Florida Shelter Medicine Graduate Programs.