As a lawyer practicing in animal law, a surprisingly large portion of the cases I deal with are about domestic abuse. The calls I receive are shocking: pets stolen by an ex, threats of harm to pets or threats of abandoning the pet on the streets. All in an effort to exert control after the victim flees.

I’ve seen assault, stalking, and harassment cases where a beloved pet is used as leverage, and prosecutors, in my experience, have been uninterested in getting involved. Even worse, judges on civil pet custody disputes are too often ill-equipped to handle the impacts of domestic violence. They say that domestic violence claims should be handled by protection order courts, even though domestic violence experts and advocates have repeatedly found that it is impossible to untangle the insidious seeping of domestic violence schemes from various court proceedings.

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