This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St.

Petersburg, Sarasota.

[music] On this Greater Series Special, a rare glimpse inside The Center for Great Apes in Wauchula.

Beekeepers at Seminole Bee Farms foster the vital role of bees.

Horses become healers at Quantum Leap Farm in Odessa.

Bird watching is more than a hobby, with the Tampa and National Audubon Society's and one nonprofit in Largo ensures that people and their pets can stay together through crisis.

[music] Hello everybody.

I'm Lisette Campos and this is a Greater Series Special.

In this program, explore the heart and soul of West Central Florida through the powerful connections between animals, humans, and the natural world.

The Center for Great Apes in Wauchula serves as a permanent home for orangutans and chimpanzees rescued from the entertainment industry, research facilities, and the exotic pet trade.

These intelligent creatures are given a nurturing, enriching environment for the rest of their lives.

[music] Every single great ape that comes in here has a story.

This is their home.

This is their sanctuary.

They're here to be chimpanzees and orangutans.

That's the whole purpose of this place.

[music] [music] The Center for Great Apes is a magical place.

It's a permanent home for these guys where they can live out their lives surrounded by tranquility and love and patience.

So they basically retire to Florida like a lot of humans do.

[music] We are a nonprofit sanctuary for orangutans and chimpanzees who have come out of entertainment the exotic pet trade.

Biomedical research.

I started The Center for Great Apes in 1993, after volunteering for three years at a tourist attraction in Miami.

And someone at the tourist attraction had a baby orangutan named Pongo, and they asked me to take care of it.

So I thought, well, let me find a good home.

But it's very difficult to put a hand raised orangutan or chimpanzee in with a zoo group.

And in 1993, there were no sanctuaries in this country, in North America, for orangutans and only one for chimps in Texas.

And I thought, well, how hard could this be?

I'm just going to start a sanctuary.

[music] That first little infant that I volunteered to take care of, Pongo is now going to be 35 this summer.

Okay, is that good Pongo?

Is that good?

Currently, we have 66 great apes at the sanctuary.

27 orangutans and 39 chimpanzees.

We've had some that are more famous than others.

For instance, Michael Jackson's chimp bubbles.

Bubbles is, most of you know, is a very famous chimpanzee that lived with Michael Jackson when he was small.

Michael Jackson had him for a few years.

The thing is, with great apes, when they're small, you can take them places, work with them.

But as they get bigger, I would say seven years old probably, they start to get really, really strong.

Chimpanzees are about five times stronger than the average human male.

Once they get to a certain age, certain level of strength.

They just can't be handled anymore.

And so that's where we step in.

[music] He doesn't care that much about me right now.

He's so interested in what you guys are doing.

[music] Every single great ape that comes in here has a story.

One of the stories that was a surprise was an orangutan, Sandra, from South America.

There was this situation in Buenos Aires of an orangutan who was alone in a small inner city zoo, and some animal welfare advocates sued for her rights to have a better life, and she was declared a person.

What that means is that she is not an object.

She has rights as a person.

Nonhuman personhood status.

So the judge declared that Sandra could not go to a zoo.

She had to come to a sanctuary.

There are other suits going on around the world suing for elephants for killer whales, the higher intelligent animals, to be treated with more respect and have more choices.

So that was a groundbreaking legal case for great apes in captivity.

When people are aware of, you know why we do what we do, why we have to do what we do, then I think that helps spread awareness around so that we can eventually not need to exist anymore, so that apes are not in that situation in the first place.

[music] All right, Mari, we open.

One of our most iconic.

Residents here is Mari.

Who is a 44 year old orangutan.

Mari lost her arms in an accident that happened when she was 12 weeks old.

She was in a cognitive research situation in Georgia for 20 years after that.

She worked on computers and she learned something called lexigrams, which are a symbol for a word.

And when I was bringing Mari down, I was cutting apples to give her in her crate, and I knew nothing about the lexigrams, but they'd given me these big charts.

So I'm just sort of saying, Mari, what is this?

And she brings her toe out right to that chart of 100 signs.

Apple.

Oh my gosh, she definitely knows them.

And I said, Mary, what else do you want.

Brings her toe back in.

Mam's good.

We actually call her handicapable because she's very smart and she does whatever she wants to do here.

[music] Can you open?

Good.

[music] I love this job, but it's also hard.

It's really hard.

It's, you develop relationships with these guys, really strong relationships, and then you lose them sometimes.

We know that they're all going to pass here, and we have to deal with that every time.

And it's very difficult.

But the reward is giving them this life.

Clyde, who is no longer with us, we rescued him when he was 45 from a cage in a garage in Dayton, Ohio.

He had never seen the light of day.

The last time he saw a chimp was when his mother was killed, and they captured him for the trade.

He couldn't walk.

He was emaciated, just skeletal.

And it was heartbreaking.

[music] We would build his nest for him every day, and he'd go and lay in the sun and just sleep all day.

And I thought, even if he only lives three months here, he will have spent the last three months of his life in sunshine and lying in a nest.

Well, after a year he had turned the nice dark chimp color he'd filled out.

He met a female here named Toddy, who was also wild caught in Africa.

And it was a love story.

[music] It's emotional to talk about it because every ape here is so special to us.

It is what we are trying to do here, to give them a dignity and a quality of life of their own companions and just some sense of being a chimp or an orangutan.

[music] [laughter] These guys are all very people oriented.

If they were to go into the wild, they would probably seek out humans to help them.

And humans are the number one predator in the world, so unfortunately they don't have the ability to be able to be returned to the wild.

We can't replicate the wild 100%, but we try to do everything that we can.

That's how we came up with the idea of these large structures that you see here.

They're between 20 and 40 feet tall, very, very large habitats that they live in.

They also have concrete night houses that really come in handy in hurricane season, especially.

One of our most unique things that we have here is our aerial trailway railway systems, around two miles of aerial railways that connect every single enclosure, every single building in the sanctuary.

In the trailways, there's doors all the way around so that not all the chimps are in the same two miles.

They have different sections, and they rotate, so they always have options to go other places.

It's super enriching for us to be able to move them around and give them new spaces.

So our trailways really give us that opportunity to be able to send them different directions and to hang out with different friends for the day.

We do not breed.

It is not within our ethics to breed here at the sanctuary.

And that is we're not trying to put more great apes into captivity.

But right before Covid, we went out one morning early to shift the orangutans outside and all of a sudden we looked up and there was this tiny baby on the belly of Sunshine, who was in her late 30s at the time.

After the initial shock wore off, I was overwhelmed by emotion because I was like, this is a redeeming moment for her.

I'm going to cry now.

She had three infants previously before she came here.

All of them were taken from her to be raised by humans, so she finally had the opportunity to raise her own baby.

[music] We actually named her Cahaya, which is the Indonesian word for radiant or light.

[music] Even though, you know, we're like, oh my gosh, we have to tell people we had an accidental baby.

Um, it was beautiful.

We have this environmental enrichment plan, you know, to enhance the physical, cognitive, emotional.

Today we have 44 paid staff and about 50 volunteers.

Because we have grown so big, we've taken in over 80 great apes in our 31 years.

Our biggest part of our staff are the caregivers that carry on all the activities for the apes during the day.

So everybody goes to their night house where they're working that day, and take a look at the apes, and they will give out any special vitamins or medications that each individual might need.

They look them over to make sure everybody is healthy and good in the morning.

Open.

Open.

[music] Love it.

[music] We do have a really nice veterinary clinic here on grounds.

It's really important that we maintain their health care.

We do a lot of enclosure side health care training so we can get those diagnostics done without having to anesthetize them.

[music] We have individualized diets for every single ape.

Every single ape has their own specific diet.

We serve three leafy greens a day three fruits, three veggies and three starches.

Each ape has their own specialized diet based on gender, health, species, and special dietary needs.

[music] I've been doing this for 15 years, and there's not a day that goes by that I'm not amazed at how smart they are.

Great apes actually know a lot more spoken English in our case, because that's what we speak than than we even know.

[music] I've seen over and over again their ability to be compassionate towards one another.

Something that you don't see in a lot of species.

[music] A huge part of our day is focused on enrichment.

Over here.

This will hang on the outside of the enclosure.

The challenge is they have to get the treats out and they'll work at that for a while.

We want to stimulate them.

So they just don't say, here's your food and here's, you know nothing to do.

[music] We encourage tool use because they're one of the only species that use tools.

One of the favorite things is butcher paper.

We have all different colored butcher paper and they will make nests with it.

They'll wear it.

They the baby loves to play in this stuff.

We're always trying to stay on top of coming up with new ideas ourselves, so that we can really give these guys the best life that we can.

[music] Thank you.

Thank you.

It is.

It's a joy and it's a privilege.

I feel so privileged to have had this open up in my life, and it's not something that I've done, done myself.

It's something that has been done by all the volunteers and staff and supporters that have helped us along the way, and that is very rewarding.

Every day when I come to work, I'm like, man, I'm so lucky to get to do this still to this day, every every once in a while, I'll be sitting with one of the chimps and orangutans and it'll just hit me.

I'm like, whoa, this is my life.

What am I doing right now?

I'm just hanging out with this chimp like they're my best friend.

[music] I think it's the best job in the world, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Here at Seminole Bee Farms, beekeepers aim to create a strong connection between bees and our community through local honey, live bee relocation, education, and this bee themed store.

They raise awareness about the importance of bees in our world.

[music] Bees have existed a lot longer than us humans.

They've been here for more than 100 million years.

[music] My father, back in the 1970s, he started beekeeping.

He had a property on the countryside in Europe, and growing up I was always around the bees because we always had hives in our backyard and my father would always go out and work on the bees.

Seeing him get stung a few times, always, always afraid to get stung.

So I always stayed pretty far away.

And it wasn't until I had my first interaction with the bees five years ago that I learned how amazing these creatures are.

I noticed a swarm of bees entered into our garage and I asked my dad, what do we do?

And he said, I have a beehive in the shed and we can try to capture them, and maybe you like it and you start beekeeping.

That's a lot different from what I was doing previously.

I was doing electrical engineering for ten years.

We went and we got the smoker and he told me just to drill a small hole in the concrete block.

And as soon as I started smoking, a lot of bees started exiting and they were flying in the air and they all landed right on the box.

In that moment, I was like, this is so cool.

This is completely different experience than I've ever had before.

In the end of 2022, my father passed away and that was a really difficult time for me.

I was really close to my father, and during the last few years of his life, we were sharing a lot of time together with the bees.

[music] [laughter] It's important to teach people about beekeeping because we want to see a change, and the best way you can do that is by educating others on the importance of bees.

The queen is the bigger one here.

Okay.

[music] In a bee colony.

You have the queen and she's responsible for laying eggs.

So a colony can only thrive if they have a queen.

And then you have the worker bees.

And the worker bees are all females.

And they start their life in working in the hive.

And later they'll become foragers, where they'll go out looking for nectar and pollen.

And then the drones are the male bees, and their only purpose is for mating.

[music] Oh my God, she's big.

[music] It's important to place the bees where they're going to have a good source of food.

We always are thinking about the seasons of when certain plants are blossoming, and we try to move the bees to those areas where they're going to be able to thrive.

This year we're putting our bees on the mangroves, and this is because the hurricanes have caused a lot of damage to the mangroves, and the mangroves are decreasing every year because of development.

By placing the bees near the mangroves, we're going to help the mangroves be pollinated.

We're going to hopefully see results in the years to come.

[music] If it wasn't for Alejandro, I would still be a backyard beekeeper.

She's the one that saw the potential in this.

She saw that it can be something a lot bigger, and she really wanted to get to the point where this could be something that we can do as our full time jobs.

[music] At Seminole Bee Farms, we offer bee education, beekeeping supplies, bee relocation services, and local honey.

[music] Today we're going to be harvesting some honey and we're going to demonstrate how that's done.

The bees, they store the honey in the supers.

And those are these boxes that are on top of the hive.

And we're going to be looking to see if the honey is capped off, because when the bees bring in the honey, it's nectar.

And then they have to dry the honey, and when they dry the honey, they'll cap it off.

And that's when we know we can harvest it.

[music] Got special bees.

They've done a really good job.

These all look so tiny.

Some of them are so little.

My favorite part about doing beekeeping is that I get to be outdoors every day and working with nature, it's really made me a lot happier as a person.

Beautiful, that's what we're looking for.

[music] Horses have a remarkable ability to help people heal.

In this next segment, we explore the powerful therapeutic bond between humans and horses.

At Quantum Leap Farm in Odessa.

Equine assisted therapy programs offer comfort, strength and restoration to those facing physical and emotional challenges.

Horses are these amazing spiritual animals to me.

Um.

They speak to my soul.

They lift me up when I'm down.

They bring me peace.

They remind me that I'm not alone.

That none of us are alone.

They connect to my heart.

And sometimes I feel like they're reading my mind.

And when you get into that sense of flow with them, it is.

There's no feeling like that better than that.

It's the best sound.

It's the best sound mister.

I almost feel like it was predestined.

You know, I think my parents used to always talk about it like it's in her DNA, like, um, just that horse human connection.

And we have humans have such a history with horses.

And there's always been this draw between the two horses provide us this unconditional acceptance in regard.

And they just see us for who we are and who we are in that moment.

And I think that's what horses brought to me from a young age.

Not that I understood that, but you understand that feeling and that feels amazing.

[music] Equine therapy comes in many different shapes and sizes, but it's really being impacted by the relationship with a horse.

Here at Quantum, we have many different programs focusing on physical side.

Sometimes the mental health side, sometimes the social side.

There are so many magical moments that happen in the arena here at Quantum Leap, and some of those occur with our veterans who are healing from post-traumatic stress.

Horses are unique.

They're not like dogs where they will love you because you feed them, scratch their stomachs, a horse, you have to earn its trust.

You have to earn its respect.

And because of that communication aspect and that work, that work together aspect really helps me learn and understand how to speak to my wife, how to speak to our kids, how to speak to the people around me.

And that's the ripple effects of what starts here, has touched everything deeply with with that part of the life.

So how's it going, Kirk?

I'm doing okay, man.

You know, some days are better than others.

Here, they're always good.

Yes, right.

And it's amazing how.

How all of us have found that that that piece after the hell and how we've found our own ways to manage and deal with it and embrace.

Economy Farm is healing.

It's really healing through connection with horses, with ourselves, with each other, with nature, and with the community and the world around us.

Slightly lean back with your right shoulder.

You're going to get a little bit of a deeper stretch through your hip flexor.

Nice mark.

Good job, Miss Ingrid.

And then, guys, slowly switch.

Take your left arm up and over.

The incident when I got hurt was a training mission for those of us, the four of us in the flight crew.

When it came time for the end of flight, we came to Harvard to ride it back to base for clearance to fly home when things in the aircraft went wrong and we started to spin.

The spin was probably about 30s, if not shorter, but it felt felt a lot longer than that.

I remember calling to the pilot saying, hey, can you can you stop that?

When he responded with, I can't.

I knew things weren't going to end well.

This was a procedure that we had trained for in the flight crew often, and knew what we could do to help prevent or help lessen the impact, but knew we were only going down one way.

My attention turned to the people in the back and trying to keep them calm, trying to keep them safe.

But when we finally did impact, investigators said that we hit with such force.

Nobody on board should have survived.

I was one of six, one of five survivors.

The other four were able to walk away.

I was crushed between day of my good friend and copilot on the left and the, uh, Air Force captain on the right, who were both both killed on impact after the helicopter crashed.

I had this this memory of just this presence of sitting in this porch of a cabin, looking out over the most beautiful scenery I've ever imagined in my life.

[music] And next to this presence, this this being.

I remember saying to it.

Wow, this is a nice place.

Can I stay here for a while?

And it responded with, no, you have work to do.

You have to go back.

You have to be good.

You have to do better with your life.

You have to do better for people around you do good.

And that's my mission, is to keep moving forward and keep doing good.

Keep helping people however I can for as long as I can.

So do you believe we've been working together for 13 years?

I can't, I can't even imagine 13 years ago.

What do you think has changed?

What's the impact that this place has had on you in those 13 years?

My confidence.

I had absolutely no confidence before I came here.

And I have a little more.

But.

Well, I have a lot more than I did then.

It's still not where it should be.

But everything I have I owe to what's happened in this property.

What do the horses do for you?

Every Tuesday morning.

Find that stillness.

There's very much a spiritual connection I have with horses.

I feel like they ground me, and they remind me that there's something bigger and greater in this world.

You know, growing up, I learned they can teach you so much about life.

And that's what I get to do now is help people through these lessons that horses teach us.

But so much about, um, patience, hard work, determination, um, you know, balance, um, you know, teach you about healthy boundaries.

They teach you, teach you about empathy, kindness.

If they can give us this opportunity.

What if we took that into our life and, um, made it more of a priority to show up and be that way.

Life is pretty fast paced and crazy and we all need to be seen more.

And I really feel like horses see us for who we are.

[music] There we go.

[music] Okay.

Sorry.

[music] Let me get out of your way.

It was a beautiful ride.

You guys just keep getting more and more in sync.

Remember, take that with you.

Okay.

Yes, ma'am.

Always that peace of mind.

Yeah.

Um, yeah.

[music] [music] Okay, bud, are you ready to warm up and get ready?

[music] There's a special thrill that comes with seeing animals in their natural environment.

The Tampa Audubon Society guides bird watchers along the scenic trails of Lettuce Lake Park, helping participants learn about the area's diverse species.

And scientists with the National Audubon Society track nesting and bird populations using their research to shape conservation efforts nationwide.

[music] When you go bird watching, you can't think about anything else.

You don't worry about what's on the grocery list that you forgot to pick up.

Now you're concentrating on wow, what kind of warbler is that?

Oh my goodness, I hear something up in the trees.

Is it a chickadee going.

Dee dee dee!

You know how wonderful it is to be able to drop the day to day and enjoy the life around you?

[music] [light music] I'm Ann Paul, and I'm a retired biologist.

[music] Tampa Audubon hosts a nature walk at Lettuce Lake Park the second Saturday of every month.

Oh, there she is.

There she is.

Okay.

Did you see the red star?

Yeah.

It's really designed for beginning birders.

People who are just learning how to maybe use binoculars or how to spot birds, or what the birds are that they're seeing.

So many times, we'll get as many as 25 or 30 species on one of those walks.

It's amazing what we do see.

And Lettuce Lake never disappoints.

Mick.

Okay.

Water thrush.

All right.

That's a specialty guys.

See where my light is?

Go to the left.

There.

The light is actually hitting on that far shore.

And it's been walking.

It's a little bit behind there.

It's right down by the water's edge.

He's right beside that bright yellow leaf.

Northern waterthrush, actually a warbler.

Yippee!

Bird watching is really popular because everybody can do it.

You don't have to be a supreme athlete.

Um, it does help if you have some equipment.

If you have binoculars.

I suggest everybody buy the best binoculars they can afford.

Because it really helps when you're looking at birds.

We have big birds that are easy to identify, so that makes it fun.

We have little birds that are hard to identify, and that makes it fun because then when you get to see one, you get this great big thrill that you were able to see it.

Oh, wow, for many of the primaries.

People benefit by bird watching because it stretches our brain.

The other thing is just getting out and walking around.

Nature is really good for you.

If you have a backyard, you can invite birds to your yard.

If you have a balcony, you can put up hummingbird feeders and put hummingbird type plants on your balcony and they'll come.

It's a great thing to have bird feeders in your yard because you really benefit from it yourself.

[music] So I've been here for a while.

I'm actually a native Floridian, was born in Gainesville.

[music] When I worked for Audubon, I was hired as a a bird monitor or actually a seasonal warden.

Then I was promoted to assistant sanctuary manager, and then I became something called regional coordinator, which I never knew what that meant.

So I figured it just meant anything I wanted to do.

[music] During the nesting season, which is in this area of Florida.

Pretty much April through August.

We would be out on the water almost every day trying to survey the numbers of birds that were nesting at each particular island.

[music] So we've got a few wading birds over here.

I've got tricolored heron chicks, snowy egrets, a lot of anhinga in here too.

[music] [music] We are trying to protect these birds and increase their population numbers, so we can eventually have them off of the threatened species list.

My work also helps contribute data to our overall population trends, and we really need that information to help shape policy and government regulations and that kind of thing.

Right now, we're facing a critical time for a lot of bird species with climate change and continued human development and disturbance.

Now is the time where we need to make sure that we're giving those birds a chance to raise their young and stay in our area.

Our birds need space.

They need those wide open beaches and being able to just share the shore with them and give them that space and time is really important to their success.

There are a lot of bird species that use Florida throughout the year.

It's a really great place for for birds, a variety of habitats.

Florida is amazing for bird watching, so I would go out almost every weekend in my free time to go birding at some of our local parks and beaches.

[music] Birds bring me joy.

I think they bring a lot of people joy.

They're.

They're beautiful.

They're interesting.

They give.

They give us a sense of place.

I think whenever you're paying attention to something other than yourself, when you sort of drop out of the your own headspace of, you know, the to do list and can stop and watch a bird and enjoy the beauty of, of nature.

I think that's a positive for anyone.

We should care about birds for several reasons.

One, I think, which is really important for us to think about if habitats can't support birds, they're not good for people either.

We need clean air and water.

This is good for birds.

But guess what?

It's good for us.

It's good for our children and our grandchildren.

We need open space because it does our hearts and souls good to get out and walk in nature.

They are a part of the world that has been given to us.

It's our her legacy.

[music] When families flee domestic violence, pets are often left behind or surrendered due to the lack of pet friendly shelters available.

Protecting paws for life is a nonprofit organization that recognizes that pets are family, too, and they work to help shelters across Florida become safe, pet friendly spaces.

These efforts allow people and their pets to stay together throughout the crisis.

[music] Currently, only 17% of domestic violence shelters across the country accept animals.

Here in the state of Florida, we have approximately 73 domestic violence shelters and currently only 18 accept pets.

Most survivors with pets.

If they can't take their pet with them, they will choose not to leave because they know what will happen to that pet if they do.

So that is one of the reasons why we are doing what we're doing, because we want to make sure that there are enough safe places for them to leave to.

[music] [dog barking] So I've been in the rescue and shelter world for almost 30 years now, and it's always tugged on my heart when owners feel like they have no choice but to surrender.

An animal to the animal shelter system.

And domestic violence is one of those challenges that we face in the rescue world, because there aren't enough domestic violence shelters themselves that take pets.

So if they want to try to keep their pets safe, they feel the only way is to bring them to an animal shelter to surrender them.

Protecting paws for life are 100% volunteers.

We were formed to support domestic violence shelters and becoming a maintaining pet friendly environments.

So we work hand in hand with domestic violence shelters to teach them how to become pet friendly in order to reduce the barriers for domestic violence victims when they are choosing to leave an abusive situation and they have pets at home that they're able to bring their pets with them.

[music] Currently, we have over 12 retail and veterinary partners across the Tampa Bay area collecting donations for us.

So our community will drop off donations to any of those locations.

They will visit us during events and donation drives.

They will drop off at my personal home.

The amount of donations that we get through our partners and through the community has been phenomenal that we've had to spend very little money on donations.

We're just so grateful for that.

[music] And one of the partners that we have is Casa Pinellas.

We not only support their shelter with staff training and donations, we also support their pet pantry at the Family Justice Center as well.

[music] Casa Pinellas is a certified domestic violence agency.

So we offer a variety of programs for survivors of domestic violence.

It runs the gamut from an emergency shelter when people are fleeing domestic violence, to our family justice center, where people can walk in and receive all sorts of case management and support for all sorts of various situations that might be happening in their lives due to domestic or interpersonal violence.

[music] Hi.

Good to see you.

Come on in.

So how are things going?

Things are going really well.

Protecting Paws For Life has been an incredible partner for us to be able to really serve the needs of survivors.

There's a big link between violence with pets and with humans.

And so in families where we have violence, oftentimes the pets have experienced traumatic situations as well.

And so when survivors are coming into our shelter or our family justice center and they're taking care of their extended family, their pets, um, protecting Paws really helps us to make sure that we're adequately assisting them to take care of those beloved family members.

[music] It can be very difficult for a survivor to leave an abusive situation.

There's lots of power and control tactics that the abuser can use.

Nationally, they say that it takes a survivor seven times to leave an abusive relationship.

And of course, one of those power and control issues oftentimes is a pet.

[music] My story started about four and a half years ago, I started dating a person who came right out of prison.

He was very institutionalized.

The violence started probably the first week we were together and just spiraled to the point of multiple strangulations.

A lot of hitting in the head and the face.

And I've had surgery because of him.

And it wasn't just physical abuse.

It was also the psychological, you know, the emotional and financial abuse as well.

There were several times where, you know, I said, I've had enough.

I'm just going to pack up and leave.

And I had been alienated from my family and my friends.

He's like, well, where are you?

Where are you going to go?

You have nobody to go to, nobody to turn to, no support system.

And also a big factor was having my cats.

It was, where am I going to go with my cats?

The situation that really made me say, okay, it's time to go was when he threatened physical violence against my cats.

Something like a light switch flipped in my head and I said, that's it.

It's time to go.

I'm not just going to leave my animals with somebody who's been physically abusive to me, because if I leave and leave them there, then there's the high probability that he will abuse them.

And I wasn't willing to give them up to a shelter or a humane society because they play an integral part of helping me heal and in my healing process.

And plus, I've had them since they were kittens.

So we are very attached to each other.

But I had no idea at that time that every other time I tried to leave, that there were shelters that would accept animals.

It's not well known.

[music] It's difficult to even understand that you're in a domestic violence situation oftentimes because it doesn't start with violence.

It starts with power and control, and it develops over time.

And one of those dynamics is threatening abuse or harm to a pet or keeping a pet from the owner.

There's a whole lot of variations that can happen there, but it starts with that power and control and then develops over time, oftentimes into violence.

So it's very hard for people to even understand when those relationships are beginning, that there's some dynamics that could potentially become violent and dangerous later on.

You literally have to rebuild a relationship yourself with your animals, because then it's it's a part trust issue with, say, me because they're like, why are we in this situation?

Why are you allowing this to happen?

They don't understand that you're not permitting this to happen to yourself, and you're trying to protect them too.

But then they're also afraid.

So they go through their own trauma, um, which, you know, they have to heal from as well.

Trauma affects dogs and cats, very similar to the way it affects children.

So you'll see aversive behaviors start to come out because they won't necessarily tell you what's wrong.

And so being able to be patient and showing kindness and love to these animals is incredibly important.

Routine is really important.

Keeping an environment calm and soft and quiet and learning how to build trust is incredibly important.

So we take our time with these animals.

We just teach them how to rebuild that trust for people.

Usually they are bonded to their human, which is great, but we want them to make sure that they understand that not all humans are bad.

[music] It's such an underreported crime.

We still in our society victim blame and don't talk about the issues.

So survivors feel very isolated.

They feel very alone.

And once we can really help them understand, it's very prevalent.

There's so many people that have experienced it.

I think it will really start to make a difference in our communities, and we can really start to address the issue in a much broader way.

[music] I like keeping families together.

I think it's important both for the humans and the animals that are facing trauma to be able to stay together.

When I'm about to have an anxiety attack or a panic attack, one of my cats will run up on my chest and just sit there and purr right on top of me or my other cat.

She will run up and actually need on me, or what we call making biscuits.

Both of them bring certain supports to me when I'm going through certain situations.

But being out of that situation, it's kind of like a huge weight is off my shoulders because I know I'm safe where I'm at, and it's actually helped me start to rebuild relationships in my life that were important to me and are important to me now.

And I have a really good support team where I'm at.

It's really empowering.

It gives you a lot of fire under you to say, okay, I'm ready to pick myself up like the Phoenix.

Pick yourself up out of the ashes, out of the fire, and just be brand new.

[music] We have a 24 over seven hotline.

Somebody can always call Casa Pinellas and talk to an advocate.

Ask questions about what's happening.

Is this abuse?

Is this something I should be concerned about?

They can also come in to our Family Justice Center.

We're open 9 to 5 Monday through Friday.

Everybody's situation is completely different in what they need, but we want for survivors to know that we want to be comprehensive and make sure that we provide what they do need so that they can reach safety.

And that means taking care of the whole family, including children and of course, pets.

[music] It's been amazing for me to be able to form and see protecting paws for life grow.

Rescue is near and dear to my heart and being able to help in this capacity, it just means a lot.

[music] From protection and conservation efforts to physical healing and emotional connections.

These inspiring stories show that when we care for animals, we all grow greater.

I'm Lissette Campos, thank you so much for watching.

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