The majority of women who end up being victims of domestic violence have confessed that when they go through such situations, they also fear the safety of their pets. But a woman that had undergone such violence took the courage to look for a solution so that other women will never have to undergo the pain as she did.

So when her boyfriend was beating her one day, her dog happened to be entering the room. The dog named J. Matthew, of the Great Dane breed went ahead and covered her by laying on top of her with her 110 pounds of weight. The boyfriend got a hammer and hit him seriously then dragged him to a busy road junction and left him there to die. This gave the attacked woman time to run away, and the police were able to accommodate her at a woman’s shelter known as the Rose Brooks Center.

Even though the hammer blows fractured his bones, J. Matthew survived. But since the shelter where the woman was living never allowed pets, she vowed never to leave her dog that received the hammer blows that were meant for her.

She explained her sad story to the shelter officials who in return did the unexpected. They abolished the rule that never allowed dogs to the shelter, which made it possible for J. Matthews to live at the shelter. And by 2012, Rose Brooks Center, was the first shelter to allow pets to live inside. The shelter build a kennel specifically for J. Matthew.

With the policy set as a law, many women preferred to leave their violent husbands and went to live in the shelter in peace.