The only charity in New Zealand that shelters pets while their families escape family violence has run out of room for dogs. Seventeen arrived in a fortnight, filling every space at Pet Refuge’s purpose-built Auckland shelter and across the boarding kennels the charity pays to hold the overflow. At least six more dogs are now on a waitlist, waiting for a bed to come free.
Pet Refuge announced the shortage on Tuesday morning, saying the speed of the influx showed how quickly its capacity can change when several pets need safety at once. Founder Dame Julie Chapman said the number was well outside the normal run of things.
“Seventeen dogs in two weeks is an extraordinary number for our team to accommodate. Every dog that comes to us needs a safe place to stay but finding that space isn’t always as simple as finding an empty bed,” she said.
That is the part most people miss. A dog cannot simply be slotted into whichever kennel happens to be empty. Chapman said the shelter has to weigh up each animal before it can find it a bed. “When dogs come to us, they are often highly traumatised and we need to consider their size, temperament, health and individual needs, to ensure we’re placing them where they can be safely and appropriately cared for by our team. We’ve now reached the point where all spaces we have available are full, and at least six dogs are waiting.”
Set against the charity’s own long-run figures, the fortnight stands out. Pet Refuge says it has provided more than 80,000 nights of safety for 979 pets from 561 families since the shelter opened in 2021. Spread across roughly five years, that works out at close to 16 pets a month, or fewer than four a week, counting every species it takes. Seventeen dogs in two weeks is about eight and a half a week, and dogs alone. Intake is lumpy by nature and a single fortnight proves nothing about a trend, but it is more than double the average pace, which is why the kennels emptied of spare beds so fast.
The same figures show how long the animals stay. Divide the nights by the number of pets and the average works out at about 82 nights each, close to three months, and each family that used the service brought a little under two animals on average. This is not overnight boarding. It is months of food, kennel space, veterinary care and staff time per animal, held open while a family finds somewhere safe to live.
The reason a pet shelter exists at all sits in a 2018 survey of 933 people by the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges, carried out with Pet Refuge’s help on the design. Its finding is blunt. “More than half (53 percent) of respondents did not leave the abuser when they wanted to out of fear for a pet or farm animal’s safety,” the report says. Threats were the common tool, with 45.3 percent of participants reporting a partner threatening to harm, kill or get rid of an animal to force them to do something, and nearly a quarter saying a partner had killed a pet or other animal during the relationship.
Chapman pointed to that research when explaining why the waitlist matters more than it might sound. “When a family is ready to leave, the last thing we want to tell them is that we don’t have space for their pet,” she said. “We know pets are used as a tool of coercion and control, and we know how frightening it can be to leave them behind.”
Pet Refuge takes referrals through crisis support agencies rather than directly from the public, and it does not accept self-referrals. It arranges transport from anywhere in the country, covers veterinary care and food, and returns the animals once the family has safe housing. The shelter’s location in wider Auckland is kept confidential for security reasons. It takes pets of all species, from cats and dogs through to birds, rabbits, horses and cows, and the charity says it has operated at capacity since it opened.
Chapman set up KidsCan in 2005 and opened the Pet Refuge shelter in 2021. She was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2025 New Year Honours, announced at the end of December 2024. Speaking to RNZ at the time, she described the gap the shelter was built to fill. “There was literally nowhere for pets affected by violence to be housed – sometimes for up to a year while their families sought their safety. We keep them so they can be reunited, and that is such a big thing to be able to do for a family going through such a traumatic and stressful time.” She added, “Their pet is often their solace, and the thing that keeps them going.”
The immediate fix is money rather than buildings. Pet Refuge can buy more room through the commercial boarding kennels it works with around the country, but every extra placement costs, and the charity is asking the public to fund those beds through a regular monthly donation of $30 under its Safe Beds for Pets programme.
Chapman said the charity can find the beds, but not for nothing. “We can create more capacity through our trusted boarding partners, but that comes at a cost. We’re calling on pet lovers to help us get the dogs on our waitlist to safety by donating to our Safe Beds for Pets programme. Without more funding, there is a limit to how many more safe spaces we can provide.”
Regular giving, she said, is what lets the charity react in a fortnight like this one rather than a month later. “Our trusted boarding partners give us the flexibility to care for more pets than we can accommodate at our shelter alone. What we want is to have enough regular support behind us so when we see increased need like this, we can respond straight away,” she said. “The more regular supporters we have, the more capacity we can create when we need it – and the closer we get to a point where we can always say yes when someone calls us needing safety for their pet.”
Details of the programme are on the Pet Refuge website. Anyone in immediate danger should call 111. Women’s Refuge runs a free crisis line on 0800 733 843, and Shine can be reached on 0508 744 633.
Have you fostered or boarded an animal for a family in crisis, or used a service like this yourself? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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