Two months ago, the Ministry of Primary Industries' Central Animal Welfare Investigations Unit gave me a brief to provide them with specific information so that they could commence their investigation into what happened surrounding the abuse, torture and death of my beloved dog, Harry - a private patient in the inaptly named "Companion Animal Hospital" of Massey University.
My background is journalism and investigative research, among many other strings to my bow. Writing, though, has been central to them all.
All my life, since I commenced my reporting cadetship at age 16, the words have flowed off my pen with ease. And while the research aspects of many writing assignments may have been grueling, none were particularly emotionally challenging.
But when the MPI team head delivered me this brief, I had no idea just how gut-wrenching - all over again - that the task ahead would be. I mean, I knew, of course, that I'd have to go back through timelines and structure my
immense amount of research into a report format versus the 50-plus articles
(or more, if you include my new
International Institute for Improvement in Veterinary Ethics initiative) that have thus far comprised the ongoing expose of Massey University's debauched conduct at its literal
veterinary house of horrors.
My Gut Was Perpetually Knotted. My Heart Hurt Beyond Measure. I Was Literally Nauseous As I Relived the Deception & the Horror All Over Again. And I Had to Put Days of Emotional Relief Between the Bursts of Productivity.
I just didn't know that I'd experience a phenomenon completely without precedent at any time in my long and multi-faceted writing career: There were times when I couldn't go on with the compilations and the writing up of it all, all over again. My gut was too knotted. My heart hurt like . . . I don't have a descriptor. But it was to the point of physical pain. There were times when I had to study the photos of Harry and the
horrendous state those monsters at Massey had rendered him into, that literally caused me to become nauseous - not a familiar state for me.
There were times when I woke at 2am all over again, as I had in the first three months after I first realised that the
whole ruse to get me to consent to his unnecessary killing had been exactly that
. . . and my brain would twist itself into knots trying to create a different ending than the actual, in-reality horrifying and - as it turned out - totally deception-driven final scene. Times when my hand would literally still be able to feel the fabric of his little blue coat as I was
wickedly told his screaming in terror and standing up strongly on his little back legs as he sensed what was about to happen, was "just his last hurrah".
I've Done It for All those Other Pet Owners Who Are Too Traumatised or Too Fearful of Repercussions to Speak Out Against Massey
And the anger was intensified when I thought about the goading and insulting emails I've had from anonymous but very obviously Massey insiders ("Hugh Janus" was one particularly memorable one) . . .
the ones who should
never, ever be anywhere near animals
of any kind, let alone anyone's beloved pet.
There were moments that were a hybrid of comfort and horror all mushed in together, when I received sympathetic emails from readers who, among other traumatic outcomes, have also lost a pet to
Massey's "Companion Animal Hospital's"
questionable "care"
and even more
questionable "skill" levels.
And to those twisted Massey characters who wrote to ridicule me and let me know I should be "over it" by now . . . if they weren't on the psychopathic spectrum, I'd tell them of, for example, one devastated woman who grieved for several years after you performed some routine-sounding procedure on her "wee dog", as she described her, and died three weeks later. She, like me, will never have another dog. The horrific memory of what you did to her dog appears to have traumatised her to such a degree.
'Hugh Janus' . . . Time for You & Your Colleagues to Re-evaluate Your Choice of Career
And others who were too worried that dogs they still had in "care" (that term used very loosely in their cases, too) or who might have to return
(by the way, fellow pet parents, please read
this article about the existence of alternatives nowadays) and the fact that their having spoken out might be weaponised against their pets . . . just as I'm more convinced than ever now
(for reasons that make themselves clear without me having to, in my 342-page report to MPI) that
Harry paid the ultimate price for my outspokenness with regard to the appalling "standards" of this veterinary "hospital".
There were those who contacted me but were too scared to speak out because they read how
Veterinary School "Dean" Jon Huxley threatened me with one of the most expensive law firms in New Zealand if I didn't, essentially, shut the fuck up.
So to those Massey insiders, let me say this: Your ridicule is not only a statement of your "character", but also a statement of your very ill-conceived choice of career.
And so an exercise I told the MPI team would take me a week or two, took nearly two months. I just couldn't face it as a continuum. That, too, is something - as a "tenacious finisher", a marathon type of operator, as I have often been described by clients - was a whole new, and very, very horrible, experience for me.
But anyway. I finally got it done. 342 pages of
forensically detailed, methodically structured, evidence-supported documentation.
Metadata analysis. Audit log examination. Billing records cross-referenced against clinical timestamps.
Data fields that had been scrubbed —
identified, documented, screen-shotted. Every claim supported. Every assertion evidenced.
Even without the benefit of the
many types, tracts and components of Harry's information (that I have a legal right to) that Massey won't release . . . because it's just too incriminating, and because there are
some formats of information that can't be falsified. Unlike the
many that they have indeed either scrubbed or falsified, or that they have
retrospectively added to and altered.
It's the digital version of a desk-thumper and it's now in the hands of people with statutory powers that no publication — however determined — possesses. People who can compel records. People who can compel testimony. People who can't be sent a letter from Buddle Findlay at the
Veterinary School "Dean" Jon Huxley's behest and with the benefit of
Vice-Chancellor Pierre Venter's
bottomless legal budget and scared into silence.
And a team that can't be stood in the way of by the
collusive Veterinary Council of New Zealand . . .
the industry "regulator", so-called, and its "leadership team", Iain McLachlan (who's the subject of a Law Society investigation regarding precisely that) and his
right-hand evasion mechanism Liam Shields (stand by for my next article exposing his latest tactic).
Watch this space.
