The Forgotten: Animals are Survivors Too by Alexia Bien

I’ll be honest, my Sweetie Pie always had faith. She was the salt of the earth. My Bentley, well, every day was
his first. They enjoyed the life before DV. My Great Gatsby was welcomed in during the height of the
abuse, more so a gift for my stepson, because my abuser felt that would win him gold stars with his son.
My Greatest of Gatsby’s endured the worst. The yelling, the abuse, even the animal abuse, as my
Great Gatsby, as a puppy, peed on the floor of the cabin (which later became our home), and my abuser
grabbed him by the scruff and threw him into -10-degree snow/weather. I went out and grabbed him
and, with my abuser’s family there, said, “Don’t you ever touch my f-ing dog again.” That was the end of
that.
I learned with that that my Great Gatsby rose to the occasion. He made his presence known when I was
around him as my protector. It became me and him very quickly.
When I was leaving, my excuse was that my mom needed help in her recovery after a brain tumor. His
response was, “Just fly there. Leave Sweetie and Great Gatsby.” In my mind, I said, “Oh hell no.”, in
reality, I said, “No, I’ll need my car to drive my mom to appointments and such.” Truth be told, as he was
recovering from 1.5 months in the hospital with cirrhosis, and I had lived with his family for those
months, and they don’t like animals, there was no way, I was about to leave my dogs with any of them.
Period. As Wendy Lyons Sunshine states in “Domestic Violence Affects Pets, Too” (December 2021),
“Dogs, for example, can become targets or pawns in a cruel game.” It would have been worse for mine if
I had not taken them with me.
Also, from Sunshine, and something we should all remember when thinking about domestic violence
and the toll it takes on our loved furry friends, “The FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System, for
example has implemented codes that make it possible to track the ways in which animal cruelty
overlaps with other crimes.”
So, Sweetie, Gatsby, and I packed up very little, picked my mom up at the airport, and drove to California
to recover and start a new life. Oddly enough, the few times I spoke to my abuser after going home,
before he was served with divorce papers, never ONCE did he ask about either dog.
I was lucky enough to have been able to go home to my mom and dad, and they welcomed both
Sweetie and Gatsby with open arms and their (2) dogs did the same. I’m

Gatsby had a very difficult time with people and trust after that. It took him a good moment to warm
up to my dad. As you can see, his trust issues almost mirrored mine with others. My Sweetie was
more forgiving in the fact that she had been through the abuse with me for longer.
Things changed when I moved to start my new life and build myself back up. A small apartment, BIG
change, something else for both Sweetie and Gatsby to adjust. Sweetie adjusted ok; she was older,
so her “care” factor wasn’t there; she was just happy to be out of the abuse. Gatsby took on a new
attitude of the protector of our menial apartment in the ghetto. He was a top dog, and he developed an
attitude of hating men. As I learned from Melissa Smith’s article, “Other pets are not so lucky and
may suffer lifelong impairments from the abuse they received.” I worried that he would

.
When my Sweetie Pie died a year after we moved, it was awful. Gatsby suffered more than I did. I cried
and cried to my technicians, and they understood. But one stepped up cause he couldn’t take it and said,
“Miss Alexis, I’m gonna make sure you have another for you and Gatsby.” I met him at a gas station on
Easter Sunday, and he brought me Ernest Hemingway. That cute little wrinkly dog; I worried about it with
Gatsby, but Gatsby took him right under his wing as if to explain, “We’ve got to protect mom!” The (2)
of them have become “thick as thieves.”
Months later, I met my better ½, and I was worried about what the circumstances would look like for
him getting to know this other “man” that would be in his life. I learned a very quick lesson in, “animals
know”. Gatsby immediately developed a relationship with him, unlike I had ever seen him in the past.
From the beginning, he had trust and faith in him, and he recognized the good soul. And with that, he
had put Ernest at ease, knowing it would be ok; they could not worry so much about me. It is
consistently a beautiful thing to watch.
The bottom line is that animals experience abuse along with their owners. They are victims, too. Let’s not
forget they are survivors as well.
If you need help with pet-friendly shelters, information is available at SAFTprogram.org and off–
The foster care programs for pets are listed on