Wawa women’s shelter can now accommodate pets

Chadwic Home in Chapleau now offers an on-site emergency shelter for women, children and their pets, removing a key barrier to fleeing abuse.

Chadwic Home is a 10-bed emergency shelter for women, children and now animals in the Chapleau, Hornepayne, White River, Wawa and Algoma District.

The fact that they now accept pets is a major development, since leaving pets behind is often a reason why women stay in abusive relationships.

“We’ve been wanting to be able to provide a barrier-free space for women and children who have pets, so they wouldn’t have to choose between leaving their abusive relationship or situation and coming to the shelter,” said Bonnie Ross, executive director of Chadwic Home.

Partnership with Purina

Ross said the home has worked with Wagging Tails Kennel to accommodate dogs and cats, but recently it has only been dogs.

Purina, in partnership with Women’s Shelters Canada, launched the Purple Leash Project in 2024. In its first year, the program supported 20 shelters, keeping more than 321 women, children, and over 200 pets safe together.

Officials from Women’s Shelter Canada said 2018 research found that only 13 per cent of shelters had the capacity to accommodate animals.

“It’s over 60 per cent of shelters at least have some form of pet sheltering,” said Kaitlin Geiger-Bardswich, director of communications and advocacy at Women’s Shelters Canada.

“It’s still the external partnership as opposed to having the internal. But this funding that Purina has been able to give us is definitely making a huge difference.”

Purina is providing $150,000 in 2025 to transform six shelters into pet-friendly spaces for the first time, and it’s helping four others sustain their programs in five provinces.

Fenced-in site

“We were able to (build) a fenced-in area directly behind the garage on the shelter site,” Ross said.

“We retrofitted our storage room and turned it into a space where we put a couple of kennel crates and painted the floor … In the shelter itself, we were able to really dedicate one room, one bedroom for now (into) what we would call a pet-friendly bedroom.”

Women’s Shelters Canada said not only is the number of people seeking support increasing across Canada, but so is the complexity of cases.

“Also, the levels of violence we’ve seen -- the severity of violence -- has been increasing. There’s been increases in strangulation, in traumatic brain injury,” said Geiger-Bardswich.

Since almost 50 per cent of Canadian households have pets, the Purina funding is huge.

“When you’re in an abusive relationship, the abuser is not just targeting you. They are often targeting or threatening to target children and family members. And that includes pets,” Geiger-Bardswich said.

“So there are a lot of women who are afraid to leave their relationship because either the abuser is threatening to do something to the pet, or they feel like if they leave and they move into a shelter and they can’t bring their pet with them, that something will happen.”