New HABRI Survey: Knowledge That Pets Improve Our Health Boosts Animal Welfare

The PAWS Act Coalition, a group of nonprofit and for-profit organizations committed to protecting survivors of domestic violence and their pets, proudly shares the recent announcement of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Victims of Crime (OVC) Emergency and Transitional Pet Shelter and Housing Assistance Grant Program. “Purina is proud to be part of the public-private partnership supporting grants to DV shelters to ensure more abuse survivors and their pets are able to enter safe shelter and begin healing together,” said Nina Leigh Krueger, CEO and President of Nestlé Purina PetCare. “The PAWS Act Coalition will work closely with the Department of Justice to raise awareness of the $3.3 million available to aid survivors of domestic violence and their pets,” said Steven Feldman, President of the Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI). “We are proud to help spread to word about the opening of the 2023 grant applications, including the new category of awards which aims to provide technical assistance to reinforce existing grantees.” FY 2023 grants will provide funding for shelter and transitional housing and other assistance for survivors of domestic violence with pets, service animals, emotional support animals, or horses. Grants awarded may be used for programs that provide support services designed to enable someone fleeing an abuser to locate and secure housing with their pet, safe accommodations for their pet, or related services such as transportation and other assistance. Additionally, funding will provide training and technical assistance yo existing grantees from FY 2020-2022. The OVC will fund five awards of up to $400,000 each for large projects and eight awards of up to $100,000 each for small projects. Eligible projects may facilitate pet-friendly shelter in different ways including emergency, transitional, and short-term shelter and housing assistance for domestic violence survivors along with their companion...

Members of Congress have been bringing pets to work since the nation’s founding. A new survey confirms that Capitol Hill remains a very pet-friendly workplace today, with a solid majority of House and Senate offices who responded to the survey saying they welcome pets at work on the Hill. The survey included in-person interviews in House and Senate offices during August, 2017, and was sponsored by Nestlé Purina PetCare and conducted on behalf of the Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI), to call attention to the benefits of pet-friendly workplaces. The Hill survey findings paint a picture of a very pet-friendly workplace: More than 80 percent of the 192 House and Senate offices who responded say they welcome pets in the office, either during recess, while Congress is in session, or both. By comparison, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, just 7% of American workplaces allow pets. The pet-friendly Hill office findings were relatively consistent across party lines, geographic regions, and both chambers, suggesting wide bipartisan support for having pets at work. “The bond we share with pets is something we can all agree on,” said Dr. Kurt Venator, DVM, PhD, and Chief Veterinary Officer at Purina. “We’ve been bringing our own dogs and cats with us to work for decades, because we believe life is better with pets. We know that pets help us de-stress, lower blood pressure, get our exercise, and even forge stronger social connections.” Steven Feldman, Executive Director of HABRI, agrees: “Scientific research shows that pets in the workplace can boost productivity, collaboration and employee satisfaction,” said Feldman. “We hope that more companies and workplaces will follow the lead of Congress to begin to think about pets as a way to boost employee health and wellness.” Pets have had a presence in Congress from the beginning. In a recent interview, the Assistant Senate Historian, Dan Holt, said senators used to bring their...

The Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI) and Pet Partners announced today a new research grant to Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) to investigate the potential for reduced loneliness among people hospitalized for mental health conditions resulting from a program of therapy dog interventions. This project, titled “A Pilot Study to Examine the Impact of a Therapy Dog Intervention on Loneliness and Related Health Outcomes in Patients with Mental Illness,” aims to address key questions to support an animal-assisted intervention (AAI) as an inpatient intervention for these vulnerable individuals.   “This pilot study is important to Pet Partners as it will help advance standards of practice in the delivery of animal-assisted therapy for a population that stands to benefit from interaction with friendly, well-trained therapy animals,” said C. Annie Peters, President & CEO of Pet Partners. “In supporting this research, we hope to make an impactful contribution to the field of human-animal interaction and to support the work of volunteer therapy animal teams across the country dedicated to sharing the healing benefits of the human-animal bond with people in need of comfort and support.”  “We know that therapy animals can be beneficial to people in the hospital, but there is a need for more scientific studies to investigate their impact on loneliness, and to fully understand what aspects of those interactions are most effective and for whom,” said Nancy Gee, PhD, Professor and Director of the Center for Human-Animal Interaction (CHAI) at Virginia Commonwealth University, the study’s principal investigator. “This study seeks to address this gap and provide further support for animal-assisted interventions as a way of addressing loneliness for this at-risk population.”  The goal of this new VCU research project is to collect pilot data in a population that is at-risk for loneliness...