Dr. Traci Zager joins the podcast to talk about the role pets can play in domestic violence and keeping people in dangerous places. She discusses how animal abuse and domestic abuse are often linked, the Purple Leash Project and how initiatives like these can aid people seeking shelter from domestic violence. She talks about what every veterinary professional should know, and how we can use our knowledge and skills to make a difference in our own communities.
This episode has been made possible ad-free by Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets!
LINKS
The Purple Leash Project: https://redrover.org/the-purple-leash-project/
Red Rover: https://redrover.org/
OVMA Education Resources (Animal Abuse): https://www.ohiovma.org/veterinarians/resources/abuse.html
Safe Place For Pets: https://www.safeplacepets.org/
National Link Coalition: https://nationallinkcoalition.org/
Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Traci Zager received her B.S. in Biology with Chemistry minor from California University of Pennsylvania. She then completed her MBA from Youngstown State University and her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from The Ohio State University. After graduation, she worked as a small animal and exotics veterinarian in Northeast Ohio before joining Nestlé Purina PetCare as a full time Veterinary Communications Manager in 2021.
In addition to small animal medicine and nutrition, Traci has special interests in companion animal behavior and education. She currently teaches courses online to veterinary technician students at her Alma Mater CalU of PA, as well as continuing to practice small animal/exotics medicine on the weekend.
Dr. Zager also served on the Animal Abuse Reporting Taskforce for the Ohio VMA, which helped to create educational materials on abuse reporting for Ohio Veterinarians. This taskforce was so important because legislation was recently passed to make Ohio a mandatory reporting state for all veterinarians. Dr. Zager also occasionally helps her local AWL with abuse cases.
Fun fact: Dr. Traci Zager is a new mom of a beautiful little boy named Jameson Henry Zager!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark:
This episode is made possible by Purina Pro Plan veterinary diets. Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I got a great episode today. Have a bit of a heavy episode today, I have to give out trigger warning. This is an episode about domestic violence and also it touches on animal abuse. And so we’re talking about the Purple Leash Project. We’re talking about fighting back and making a difference in ways that vet professionals can get involved. I’m very happy to have this conversation and I learned a lot in this conversation and it’s good.
It’s motivating me to take some action and to get more educated and to look at how I can support. But if domestic violence, if animal abuse are triggers for you, this might be an episode to skip or to check out the transcripts. We do have transcripts of our podcasts thanks to Banfield Vet Hospital. They made transcripts possible in an effort to help increase inclusivity and accessibility in our profession, which is a super awesome thing that they do. And we’ll have links to that in the show notes and over on the website. And yeah, that’s it. So guys, good episode coming up. I hope you’ll enjoy it. I got a lot out of it, I hope you all too. Let’s get into it.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter:
(Singing) This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to The Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Traci Zager. Thanks for being here.
Dr. Traci Zager:
Hi, thank you so much for having me. How are you today?
Dr. Andy Roark:
I’m good. I am good. I’m super good for a Monday. It’s been a wild day back in the office as you know, but man Fall is here, did the pumpkin patch thing with the kids over the weekend. You’ve got, you’re not there yet, but you’re going to be there. Tracy has, she has a five month old little boy, her first. Just back from maternity. The excitement is just coming. How is the walking going at your house?
Dr. Traci Zager:
Oh my gosh, he’s doing great. He’s running around in his little walker and chasing the dogs and we went apple picking. We went to an orchard recently and he got to help us pick some apples and sit around some pumpkins, which was fun. But yeah, he’s not quite old enough to pick his own pumpkin or apples yet, but we’ll get there.
Dr. Andy Roark:
But you got that Halloween baby pumpkin picture, didn’t you?
Dr. Traci Zager:
Oh, we’re going to, We got one with a pumpkin, but we haven’t gotten one with him in a pumpkin yet.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh yeah. The opportunities are endless. Good timing, good timing on that. Everyone should plan their pregnancy around photo ops, I think. And you just nailed it. Well done. Alright. For those who don’t know you, you are a veterinarian communication manager with Purina. You are a practicing veterinarian. You do small animal and exotic in Northeast Ohio. And you are here talking with me about the Purple Leash Project, which I am super pumped about. I’m really glad that you’re here. This is something I think more people should know about and I appreciate you making time to be here. So thanks a lot for that. Do you want to go ahead and kick us off and just give a mile high view on what the heck is the Purple Leash Project and why is it important?
Dr. Traci Zager:
Absolutely. So the Purple Leash Project is a partnership between Purina and Red Rover. Essentially what they do is they provide grants to domestic violence shelters to help them become pet friendly. The biggest problem that we know that a lot of these survivors face is that they have to make the choice of whether to stay in an abusive relationship to protect their pets or leave their pets behind and escape. And that’s not something that we want them to have to choose. We want them to be able to take their whole family with them. So we know also just how often this is happening that it’s just really important that we provide these grants and help these domestic violence shelters to become more pet friendly so they can take them with them.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Can you tell us a little bit about Red Rover? That’s a group that I only learned about through you and I don’t know if other people are really familiar. So tell me a little bit about that.
Dr. Traci Zager:
Yeah, so Red Rover is like a Red Cross for pets. They provide housing and relief for people and pets in crisis situations.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Tell me a little bit more about why having pet-friendly shelters is so important and the impact on survivors. So just you unpack it a little bit, but give me a clear picture of the prevalence of this and that reality.
Dr. Traci Zager:
Yeah, so one in three women and one in four men will experience domestic abuse or domestic violence at some point in their lives. And so with it being that prevalent, we also know how many people have pets and that’s a huge part of their life. It’s a huge part of their family and that human animal bond is just so important. And we know 48% of people that are trying to escape a situation like that, delay their escape in order to help escape with their pets. So we don’t want them to have to wait to get out of these situations. We want them to be able to get out as soon as possible. The other thing is we know a lot of abusers will threaten their pets or even threaten to kill their pets if they try to leave. So having a way for them to escape and know that their pet is safe as well is going to help them recover and help their mental health as well. If they’re worried about what’s going on with their pet and their abuser as they try to escape, they’re never going to be fully free.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about where the veterinarian starts to interface with this? So let’s talk, I hate to go too much here, but I think it’s important, let’s talk a bit about animal abuse as it relates to domestic abuse, and then start to unpack what is the role of the veterinarian here? What should we be looking out for in our practices? How do we start to perceive these situations?
Dr. Traci Zager:
Yeah. So the role of the veterinarian is way more than I think a lot of us consider on a day to day basis. So the link between domestic violence, elder abuse, child abuse, it’s just so prevalent, and it’s part of that cycle of violence that we think about so frequently. If one population of vulnerable individuals like pets are likely to be harmed by an abuser, then other vulnerable populations are likely to be abused as well. So we think of domestic violence and we think of child a abuse and neglect as well. And we also know just how often when things are being investigated, another type of abuse or violence is uncovered.
So on the National Link Coalition’s website, they detail a statistic that I find just really powerful. So in an investigation of homes that were suspected of child abuse, they range between 60 and 88% of those homes also having animal abuse found. And so it’s happening as a coincidence really commonly. And we as veterinarians, if we’ve always been mandatory reporters of child abuse and domestic violence, that’s always been a thing. But not every state has some sort of legislature or laws around being a mandatory reporter for animal abuse, which I find crazy. And so when we report a suspected animal abuse, we may be saving other vulnerable populations within that household. We might be leading investigators to find child abuse or domestic violence and helping to save those individuals as well.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, we have a broad swath of people in the vet profession that listen to the podcast and everything. So just to run to this quickly, what are telltale signs? What are the flags that we’re looking for where we may be potentially looking at animal abuse? Can you run me through those?
Dr. Traci Zager:
Absolutely. So there’s a range of different types of abuse that you could see, whether that’s neglect or hoarding, intentional abuse or non-accidental injury or organized abuse, which is things like animal fighting. The biggest red flags I would say, I have seen in practice is when the injuries don’t match up to the history. So if an animal is hit by a car, they’re not going to have bilateral rib fractures and a hind limb that’s potentially fractured in multiple places. They’re not going to have fractures that are healing in different or in different states of healing. So looking at all of those red flags, when the history of what they’re saying happened and what the injury pattern you’re seeing is, they’re not matching up, those are the biggest ones that I would say.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Walk me out of this situation. So you’ve given me this place and let’s just say that I’ve got a pet in and a history of injuries. And they go, “Gosh, this pet seems accident prone.” And I’m looking at him going, “These stories don’t match up.” And I thought your fractures at different stages of healing. That makes a lot of sense. I can imagine me being in this room and not wanting to believe what I’m looking at, can you help me get my head around of steps that I might take from there? We started to talk about reporting it and honest to say I’m not exactly sure where I would report it. Can you help me parse out where I would go from here?
Dr. Traci Zager:
Yeah, absolutely. And this is where I really got into this space and how I became so passionate about it is because I was in your situation. I was in the room with a client and things weren’t adding up and I needed to figure out what to do next. And I felt like there were just, I didn’t know where to look. I didn’t know what resources were out there and I didn’t know who to ask. We’re all afraid that we’re wrong, we’re veterinarians. We’re really, really good at being right and we really don’t want to be wrong about something so serious. And so a lot of people that I talked to as I was working through this, didn’t want to make reports or didn’t want to ask those tough questions in the room because they didn’t want to suffer the embarrassment or the potential consequences of being wrong about that or being wrong in that thinking.
So I think if you’re noticing anything, you are the one who’s most qualified to make that determination of whether or not the history and what you’re finding on your physical exam is matching up. Police don’t know how to do that as well. Lawyers don’t know how to do that. Veterinarians are really on the front line of trying to figure out, is this a non-accidental injury? Is this abuse or is it not? And I think that’s the first step in this thinking is realizing that you’re the expert as a veterinarian or a veterinary technician. You’re the one who understands how these injuries happen and you’re the one who knows what to look for on an exam. In those instances where maybe you’re not sure, this is where it’s a really good idea to have that relationship with these reporting organizations before you ever need to make a report.
So you want to feel comfortable enough to call and say, “Hey, maybe I’m not a hundred percent sure, but this is what I’m seeing. What should I do next? And how can I help you in the steps going forward?” And they are more than happy to help you with that. So you don’t have to be a hundred percent right, you don’t have to be a hundred percent sure, but if you think it’s happening, you should make a report if you have any sort of reason, reasonable suspicion. And those reporting partners vary based on where you live. And the National Link Coalition’s website has a directory based on your county. So you can look up exactly who to report to. They’ll give you the organization’s name and phone number, maybe even their email and their address on that website. So you can write that information down and have it available to you before you ever need it.
And I would really recommend to any veterinarians listening, make those relationships now. Call them, tell them that this is what you’re thinking about, that you’re not a hundred percent sure about what to do. But you do want to reach out and have those relationships so that if you’re not sure you still feel comfortable calling and talking to someone. Because what happens after you make the report, you’re not the police, you’re not the lawyer, you’re not doing anything else. You’re just giving them your opinion and stating that you think something might be happening. You’re giving them your objective exam findings and what happens after that is totally not up to you. You don’t have to worry about all that.
Dr. Andy Roark:
This is really helpful and I totally hear what you’re saying about going and having those relationships. So, for me right now, say I’m not looking at anything particularly that I’m concerned about, but I see what you’re saying and I go, “I don’t have those relationships.” So I’m going to put the link to the National Link Coalition down in the show notes. It’s definitely something, I’m going to just take a look at to have that information.
Do we as doctors, reach out to groups now and say, “I’m not looking at anything. I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself.” Is that what we have in mind or are you more, When you say have a relationship, do you mean mostly know who you would contact if and when you needed to? If we are reaching out now, what am I saying? Because I don’t want this to be awkward, but in the same way, I think this is important. And so I’m really navigating this weirdness of I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t say something and someone was negativity affected. And so I’m going to push myself to go ahead and get my ducks in a road just so I can be there if someone ever needs me.
Dr. Traci Zager:
Yeah, I think both. So it’s okay if it’s awkward. It doesn’t have to be, but it’s okay if it is, to just reach out and say hi and just say, “Hey, I’m a local veterinarian. I was just doing some research on the connection between animal abuse and domestic violence and child abuse. I think it’s really important that I just reach out and say hello. And that way we can get to know each other a little bit.” I think it’s also really helpful, they can potentially educate your clinic. So depending on the organization you’re reaching out to, they deal with this more than you do. They might be able to come in and say, “Hey, let’s do a 30 minute talk where I tell you more about how to investigate these things and determine whether or not you do have something going on in your clinic or what to look for, or I can just meet with you for lunch and we can feel more comfortable talking to each other and know what we’re looking for on both ends.”
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What happens, Tracy, when you call these places? I imagine me putting in this phone call going, “I don’t really know.” And then there’s helicopters and people crashing through windows and things like that. I know that’s not, but what should my expectation be if I reach out to a group or support network and say, “Hey, I’m looking at this, but I don’t really know.” What is that set in motion?
Dr. Traci Zager:
Yeah, so they might ask you for your exam findings. So they might just say, “Can you just let me know what you found on your exam? Give me some objectives, some objective information that I can look through and help you to determine if there’s something going on.” They might say, let’s say if it’s a hoarding case. So I had a hoarding situation with one of my clients where I determined that that was what was going on, and all I did was help her find resources and help. So as soon as I contacted our local anal welfare league, it’s not like they came out with handcuffs and put her in the back of a squad car. So they sent somebody to the house, they helped her rehome a lot of these animals. They helped her get the animals out and find new homes and get veterinary care.
They educated her. It wasn’t a situation where she ended up going to jail. They just provided her with the resources she needed to get out of this situation. And 90% of the time that’s what happens. So there’s education, there’s some sort of intervention where the pet is helped, the owner is helped. They want these pets to stay with their owners. So if it’s a neglect or they didn’t know better type of a situation, they educate them, they help them remediate the situation, and then they move on and continue with just welfare checks on that animal.
If it’s a really bad situation like we’re concerned about a non-accidental injury or intentional abuse, they might do a welfare check. They might also consider bringing police along, things like that, just to see what’s going on in the house. They might investigate if there’s been any reports of things like domestic violence or child abuse in that home before they do that welfare check. And again, after that, after the veterinarian has made the report, nine times out of 10, they don’t need anything else from you. You make your report, you get concerned. You might be able to call and ask what happened later on, but you don’t have to be involved in anything else after that.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Okay. That makes sense. And you’re clearly really passionate about this, and this is something that I know that you were really interested in before you went to Purina. How did Purina decide to get involved in the Purple Leash and how did that get started?
Dr. Traci Zager:
Yeah. So I know that there was, I don’t know a hundred percent sure, Andy, how it first started at the very beginning, I do know that the partnership between Purina and Red Rover started in 2019, and that was really when the whole grants and all of that started. I do know as well that in general, Purina got started in this space because we really care about the human animal bond. We care about keeping pets and people together. And this is one of those situations where people are having to make really, really difficult decisions to leave their pets behind in scary situations, and we don’t want them to have to make that choice.
Dr. Andy Roark:
That makes total sense. Talk to me a little bit about how veterinarians and the public can support Purple Leash. How do they engage in what happens?
Dr. Traci Zager:
Yeah, so the most obvious way that veterinarians could be a participant in Purple Leash Project is to make a donation. So on the website, you can make a donation and they’ll send you one of these beautiful purples leashes. They have really nice cushy hand grips, and they’re very nice leashes, but they have walk heel together on them, which is really cute. It really symbolizes that bond. And the purple is obviously a nod to domestic violence awareness, which is the purple ribbon.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Yeah, I love it. What else should people know about Purple Leash Project, Red Rover any final words, anything like that? This has been super helpful and insightful. I really appreciate you talking through with me. So but Final Pearls.
Dr. Traci Zager:
Yeah, so I think one of the biggest one really is that the goal for the Purple Leash Project is to make 25% of domestic violence shelters pet friendly by 2025. So that’s our big goal. That’s what our we’re striving for as far as the Purple Leash Project goes. And then as far as the veterinarian’s role in all of this, just know that by listening to this podcast and by going into your exam rooms with this in the back of your mind and seeing your clients and their relationships with each other and their pets through this lens, that’s really half the battle, is being willing to think about it, being willing to educate yourself about it, and then putting it into practice when you go in and do your exams.
Dr. Andy Roark:
Oh, Tracy Geiger, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for the work that you do. Thanks for telling me about it, guys. Thanks for listening today. I’m going to put links to all of these resources to Purple Leash Project, to the National Link Coalition, to Red Rover, all those sorts and stuff. I’ll hook you guys up in the show notes. Okay and take care of yourselves, be well, do good work alright, see you later. And that is our episode, guys. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. As always, it feels good to make a difference. Share these links. Think about getting involved and helping out. And I’m going to do the same, but guys, yeah, sometimes we forget how lucky we are and we forget what other people are facing. And most times we don’t have any idea what’s going on in the houses of the people and the pets that we take care of and stuff. Anyway, gang, be well. Take care of yourselves. I’ll talk to you later.
