Physical pet abuse: how harming a pet can control their family
Content note: This article discusses physical pet abuse without graphic detail.
When an abuser deliberately harms a pet, that pet suffers. Within family violence, those tactics can also be used to frighten, punish or control the person who loves them.
This can form part of coercive control: a pattern of abuse used to create fear and restrict another person’s freedom and choices.
Together with Pet Refuge partner and ambassador Debbs Murray of ECLIPSE Family Violence Services, we explore how physical harm to pets can affect the whole family.
What can physical pet abuse look like?
Physical harm can involve violence against a pet, deliberate neglect or keeping them in conditions that damage their health and wellbeing.
Physical violence
This can include hitting, kicking, strangling or other acts that cause pain and injury. In the most serious cases, a pet may be killed.
Abusers perpetrating family violence may carry out this harm to punish a family member, force them to comply or demonstrate what happens to the pet when the victim acts against that abusers wishes.
Deliberately withholding essential care
A pet may be denied food, water, flea and worm treatment, or necessary veterinary care. Injuries may be left untreated.
The abuser may also prevent someone else from caring for the pet—for example, by withholding money for treatment or stopping them from getting to a vet.
This distinction matters. The victim who wants to help may be prevented from doing so by the same person causing the harm.
Harmful confinement and living conditions
Abusers may keep a pet tied up or confined without adequate space, shelter or care, or force them to live in their own waste.
Victimsmay also prevent their family from reaching the pet to feed them, clean their surroundings or check on their health.
Using a kennel or keeping a pet in a particular space is not automatically abuse. What matters is whether the conditions and treatment cause harm or fail to meet the pet’s needs, and how this fits into the wider pattern of harm.
How does harming a pet control their family?
An abuser may exploit the bond between a pet and their family. By causing harm to the pet, they can create distress and influence and control what the person who loves them is free to do.
For example, if a victims pet is injured because they goto see a friend, they may stop making those social visits to try to prevent another injury to the pet.
The effect can continue beyond the incident itself. The person has seen what can happen and will do all they can to adjust their behaviour to protect their pet.
They may remain close to the pet, avoid disagreeing or give up activities that previously mattered to them. Their decisions become shaped by the harm the abuser has caused.
Why can’t the family simply take the pet away?
From outside the situation, removing the pet may seem like an obvious solution. But the victim who is trying to protect them, may also be experiencing violence and control, and removing the pet may not be a safe option, no matter how much they wish to create safety for their pet
Victims may have no access to money or transport, have been threatened, and/or may even be stalked, and their movement monitored, and so are prevented from taking the pet to a vet, or have nowhere safe to stay that can accommodate them both.
Victims will be taking steps to protect their pet that others cannot see.
Asking why they “allowed” the harm overlooks how victims do try to protect their pets. Responsibility lies with the person causing the abuse. Understanding what is preventing the family from finding safety helps us respond more safely and appropriately.
How Pet Refuge helps
Finding somewhere safe for a pet can help remove one of the barriers to leaving family violence.
Pet Refuge provides temporary shelter and care for pets from across New Zealand while their families seek safety. Our service includes transport, veterinary care, enrichment and regular updates for families, at no cost to them.
Pets already have loving families. They are with us temporarily and reunite with their families when safe.
A pet does not need to have been physically injured for their family to contact us. Families may need support because their pet is at risk or because they cannot take them to safe accommodation.
Need support?
If you are worried about your pet’s safety while experiencing family violence, contact 0800 PET REFUGE or help@petrefuge.org.nz, when it is safe to do so.
If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 111.
Developed in collaboration with Pet Refuge partner and ambassador Debbs Murray of ECLIPSE Family Violence Services.