IMPORTANT NOTE TO PET OWNERS:
Under
New Zealand's Animal Welfare Act 1999, companion animals are recognised as sentient beings, and in civil/property law, they remain the legal property and chattels of their owners.
Converting private property for unauthorised commercial use
(like student training or film production, as is
documented here
to have been the case with
the author's own pet, Harry, a blind papillon
offering Massey's
Dr Steffi Jalava
and
Dr Anita Shea
additional student interest teaching value
vis-à-vis his blindness, which
veterinary codes of practice
should have ensured, as a
disability, resulted in greater care, NOT training utilisation)
without consent is an
actionable legal violation.
Separately, and beyond the ownership question, the
Act's own definition of ill-treatment
— "causing the animal to suffer, by any act or omission, pain or distress that in its kind or degree, or in its object, or in the circumstances in which it is inflicted, is unreasonable or unnecessary" — together with Section 11's obligation on persons in charge of an ill or injured animal to ensure it receives treatment alleviating any unreasonable or unnecessary pain or distress, would itself have prohibited
Harry's use in invasive, hands-on student procedures
while in his
catastrophically over-sedated, fluid-deprived, renally compromised state, irrespective of any question of consent or ownership.
The
intentional, repeated, catastrophic levels of overdosing with an unnecessary, contraindicated, convenience sedative; his covert conversion to University utilisation as a
live teaching specimen; and the
fabricated diagnosis manufactured by Drs Shea and Jalava
to support
Jalava's aggressive coercion of Harry's owner
(by plan,
misrepresenting his undisclosed sedated state as a sudden "neurological decline")
achieved an
immediate, in-situ termination of his life
—
later discovered to be completely unnecessary.
The
quest for accountability is ongoing
and is being
strenuously resisted by Massey's management, with the
Veterinary Council of New Zealand in full and active support of Massey's obstruction and perversion of natural justice.
The Graduation of Ignorance or the Graduation of Evil?
If this is how
Massey trains its students to think about consent and ownership, that mindset doesn't stay contained within the university.
It graduates with those students.
This article outlines specific, documented clinical anomalies from the final admission of Harry Kelly on November 30 and December 1, 2025. The data points retrieved directly from Massey University's (albeit highly redacted) clinical records establish a timeline that forces a binary ethical question regarding the environment in which New Zealand's future veterinarians are trained.
The
Clinical Summary itself is impregnated with multiple fabrications and posthumous additions and insertions — all itemised and pointed out to
MPI's investigators in my 342-page report.
This Was Not One Clinician's Spontaneous Decision (Which Would Have Been Heinous Enough)
Massey's own records, from a visit several months prior, document that
Harry had an adverse reaction to Gabapentin at a quarter of the
dose he was given on the night of November 30.
International veterinary literature, and Plumb's Veterinary Drug Handbook specifically, state that
Gabapentin must be used with caution and at reduced dosages in renally impaired patients — and
Harry's own admission bloodwork showed marked elevations of urea and creatinine, confirming exactly that impairment. Despite this documented history sitting in Massey's own files and updated with the extensive bloodwork I paid for that very night, he was given a full-day dose calculated for a healthy dog many times his size, potentiated with a second drug, with two individually catastrophic doses administered just 26 minutes apart — all
within the opening hours of the overnight shift.
This is not the profile of
reckless incompetence alone. The severity, the catastrophic dosages of the specific drug already flagged as contraindicated in Massey's own records, and the timing —
concentrated at the very start of his admission (and continued on the next day by the day shift) — raise the question of whether
Harry was identified and earmarked as a teaching specimen from the moment he arrived. That is, rather than simply an opportunistic decision by "Dr" Steffi Jalava alone, made on the spot the following morning to avoid hitting the emergency button, which would mean having to commence urgent corrective treatment and also therefore having to write a report for the formal records.
Were Jalava's & Shea's Students Deceived or Willing Participants in the Deception?
The clinical records show that
Harry's IV fluid line was permanently disconnected at 8.38am on Monday, December 1, 2025. By this time he would have been in a state of pharmacological collapse or near-collapse. That rehydrating fluid - the only thing for which he was actually admitted, would, by that time have been life-essential, in order to flush the phenomenal overdoses of Gabapentin and the potentiating Prevomax through his already impaired kidneys (the kidneys being Gabapentin's precise exit route from the body).
In terms of how many staff were involved in the decision to covertly convert this pet of a private fee-paying client (me) for owner-unauthorised, invasive, hands-on student training activities, it is instructive to note that Dr Steffi Maja Jalava stated in conversation that her day shift did not commence until 9am. Therefore, the physical act of disconnecting the life-essential fluids occurred under the watch of
the overnight crew during the final minutes of the
midnight-to-9am shift.
(This would be why Massey and the Veterinary Council are refusing not only to release the identity of the veterinarian on that shift, but are also refusing to confirm that they even operate that overnight shift with a licensed veterinarian in attendance.)
Furthermore, the
invoice details the explicit charging of a premium "Dura Flow Coil MILA set". This specialised coiled tubing is engineered to extend and stretch, allowing an animal to move or turn in its cage without kinking or tangling the line. The presence of this equipment invalidates any post-hoc claim that fluids were disconnected because the patient was moving or thrashing. (The heavily heavily redacted and ludicrously doctored "Clinical Summary" claims the IV line was disconnected because the "line keeps tangling" . . . belying not only the very specific equipment billed for, but also the claim to any degree of professionally-educated, qualified or even supervised care . . . UNLESS . . . ) The
line was unhooked because the physical pump and running tubing presented an impediment to moving Harry away out of his cage for hands-on student training modules and video production.
Tellingly, no IDEXX diagnostic monitoring of Harry's vitals exists for the Monday morning period (the morning after his Sunday night admission), despite monitoring having been run the night before. To any ethical or qualified veterinary staff member, a renally-compromised patient receiving repeated heavy sedation requires blood monitoring to track clearance and toxicity. None was run.
The "Clinical Summary" also makes a vague reference to a phone call allegedly made to me as Harry's owner at approximately 8am —
a call I never received. No call was missed, no voicemail was left, and no record of any incoming call from Massey at that time exists on my end. This detail (together with significant other fraudulent claims, noting that Harry's Clinical Summary sat with Massey's Legal department for some time before its release to me) has been included in full within the
342-page forensic timeline report I produced for the Ministry of Primary Industries' Animal Welfare Investigation team currently investigating Massey's
Veterinary Teaching Hospital.
The Students Were Either 'In On It' & Complicit . . . Or They Are Being Intentionally 'Mis-educated'
The above establishes the first ethical binary for the students present on the morning of December 1, 2025:
- The December 1, 2025 Students Were Either the Subjects of the Deception:
If
students participated in the morning's "training" session believing that Harry was a sanctioned, scheduled end-of-life euthanasia case, they were
deliberately misled by senior clinical staff. (He absolutely was NOT, and the
13-page additional document I also produced for the MPI Animal Welfare Investigation team, containing the relevant sections of his recent (including up to just 12 days' prior at an independent vet clinic) is concrete proof of that - notwithstanding even if that
weren't the case, such a decision is not for Massey staff and students to make to justify their covert utilisation of a client's pet.)
If the students were deceived by the overnight staff, Jalava and "Dr" Anita Shea, those students were
induced into utilising a live, conscious, heavily sedated animal (a client's pet i.e. private property) as a teaching prop
under false pretences.
OR
- The December 1, 2025 Students Were Complicit:
If students were
not given that false framing and participated
without questioning the absence of owner authorisation, then the
training environment normalises the unauthorised use of private clients' fee-paying pets for covert conversion as
literal stolen property for Massey's commercial usage.
The
Neurologist Who Wasn't on the Bill
Massey bills for
everything. Yet the invoice for Harry's admission
contains no charge whatsoever for the involvement of Dr Anita Shea, the "neurologist"
Jalava told me she had brought in to examine him . . . remembering that there was nil sign or suspicion either by me at any time, and on his independent veterinary records as of just 12 days' prior, of any such "neurological issues" that would require a "neurological" examination (and bearing in mind that Harry was admitted purely for rehydration during a period of intense high temperatures).
The timing of how that
Shea's involvement was disclosed to me is, in itself, informative. If Jalava genuinely believed Harry was experiencing a sudden neurological decline, that would have been the first and most urgent thing she told me — both in the 45-minute phone call and in the room. It wasn't. No mention of it in her circa 11am phone call to me (which was as vague in justification and reasoning as it was coercive, re her insistence that she wanted his destruction upon my arrival back at Massey that afternoon), and during the then in-person circa one-hour coercion, this "neurological" framing was introduced only once her prior, vaguer characterisations of his condition weren't securing my agreement. To be noted, when she felt she had sufficiently "conditioned" me and I was allowed to see Harry, she at one point had me place him on the floor and demand that I watch him walk. He was barely able to . . . being disoriented in his blindness and the unfamiliarity of the environment . . . but more to the point . . . he was, unbeknownst to me, SEDATED. Of COURSE he couldn't walk strongly or in a straight line. Neither, would JALAVA have been able to under such heavy (and undisclosed) sedation!
Back to the "neurologist", "Dr" Anita Shea, who - according to Jalava - had "examined" him in order to back up Jalava's "neurological" "diagnosis": Even the "Clinical Summary" that was finally released to me when Massey's Legal team had finished doctoring it, shows that, in fact, with a proper read, Shea was actually conducting student hands-on activity with Harry, in conjunction with Jalava's use of Harry as a live teaching specimen. That's why something that Massey would normally bill mercilessly for wasn't billed for, and that's why no "neurological" decline or emergency was introduced into the "immediate euthanasia required" coercion until all the various vagaries hadn't hit a home run with me.
In other words, either a genuine neurological assessment was performed and never billed (but Massey doesn't, in fact, work that way), or an assessment that was never genuinely about Harry's neurology at all was deployed, mid-conversation, once it became useful as a tool of persuasion.
This raises the same question already posed of the students more broadly: did they know Shea's "neurological examination" was being conducted on a dog whose owner had not been told the truth about his
repeatedly and catastrophically over-sedated condition, and were they comfortable with that —
comfortable enough to participate, photograph, and film it regardless, including on cell phones in selfie mode (and what happened to those videos, because Massey has refused to release the majority of them)?
Or were those students told that this was a genuine, necessary clinical assessment, conducted with the owner's knowledge and the dog's welfare in mind,
when in fact neither was true?
A Question to Those 'Veterinary' Students of December 1, 2025
Tell me . . . if you, once graduated, were needing to communicate that the reason — or the primary reason — for your client's pet to suddenly need "euthanased" was some sharp neurological decline . . . wouldn't you
lead with that in your conversations?
Wouldn't that be the first thing you said when you called them? And wouldn't it be the first thing you said, and your main point of discussion, in a "consultation" in which you were pushing for "euthanasia"? (Again, it was never mentioned once on the morning's lengthy phone call from Jalava, and it wasn't brought up until well into the "consulting" room discussion, when Jalava could see that I wasn't buying the otherwise general, vague nature of her reasoning.)
Either answer returns to the same indictment already established.
If the students
knew, then Massey's training practices, and
Steffi Jalava's and Anita Shea's "teaching" processes and "ethics", normalise participating in a fiction performed on a non-consenting client's pet.
If the students
didn't
know,
then they were lied to about the very nature of what they were being trained to do . . .
they were being taught to believe they were witnessing legitimate, necessary clinical practice when they were in fact participants in a
staged justification for a pre-determined outcome.
What Was Actually Done to Harry
Whatever students were or weren't told, what was physically done to Harry that morning is documented in
Massey's own clinical notes.
He was subjected to a menace response test —
repeated testing of the blink reflex of a dog who was blind.
(Editor's Note: Is there not something that seems odd to you about that, Students?) Proprioception testing, flipping his paws to see how long it took him to correct them. Vestibulo-ocular reflex testing, forcing his head from side to side. A sound reaction test (intensely frightening for a blind dog in an unfamiliar, clinical environment) noted as showing "inconsistent responses" — ignoring that he was heavily sedated at the time (and used as the justification for stating in the "Clinical Summary" that he was "deaf" (Harry had perfectly normal, even sharp, hearing, despite his age). Calvarium pressure, applying pressure to his skull
to elicit a pain response. A full
dental grading exercise, clinically irrelevant to a dehydration admission (and the height of cruelty and clinical and ethical irresponsibility on a pharmacologically-collapsing dog), but high "teaching value" for a student rotation.
None of this bears any relationship to the sole reason for his admission — rehydration.
But all of it provides the live teaching specimen needed to make good on the promises Massey makes to its students in its program marketing literature . . . never mind that it appears to come at the cost of
utilising - including lethally, where convenient, for Jalava, Shea and ICU night staff - private clients' family pets.
What Was It Like to Stand in That Room?
Horrifying? Uncomfortable? Just Another Day in the Clinic? Or Exciting to See Such Cruelty in Action?
Somewhere in that ICU, on the morning of December 1, there were
students standing over a small, blind, fifteen-year-old dog who could not see who was touching him, poking and
prodding him cruelly and mercilessly, including"interesting" but horrifying (to a blind dog) investigative procedures on his little blind eyes for their apparent "edification" . . . and who could not understand why his body would not respond the way it should, and who could not call out for the one person he trusted to make it stop (i.e. his owner, myself, who believed her beloved dog was in the "caring" hands of "Massey" receiving the simple, straightforward 24-hour rehydration protocol for which he was actually there).
Some of those students will have simply done as they were told, the way trainees in any hierarchical clinical environment are conditioned to do. Some may have felt a flicker of unease — at the dog's stillness, at the absence of any owner present, at being asked to test reflexes on
an animal who showed every visible sign of being heavily sedated rather than neurologically impaired — and said nothing, because
questioning a senior clinician mid-rotation is not what students are taught to do.
It's worth ALL of Massey's "veterinary" students taking some time to reflect on whether this normalisation of cruelty, covert private property conversion, and deception of fee-paying pet owners right through to the point of the convenient destruction of the evidence of these actions, malpractices and misfeasances involving the deception of pets' owners with false diagnoses and high-pressure, intensive coercion socked away in a private room . . . whether this is the standard of "compassion" and "ethics" that they want to import into the private veterinary clinics of New Zealand and further afield.
If
a pet owner cannot trust you
not to convenience-sedate, overdose, and utilise as your own property, their pet behind the closed doors of your own back-of-house — is that the veterinarian, is that the
human being, you want to become when you walk out into the vet clinics of New Zealand, or anywhere else in the world?
Did you really pay five years' hefty tuition fees to
Massey University's Veterinary "Teaching Hospital" to have them surgically
remove your compassion, your
ethics
and your
basic humanity? Is that why you wanted to become a vet?
_________________________
MESSAGE TO IMMEDIATE PAST VICE-CHANCELLOR OF
MASSEY UNIVERSITY, JAN THOMAS, ON WHOSE WATCH THESE
STUDENT TRAINING STANDARDS WERE NORMALISED:
Now that you
chair the very organisation that provides accreditation for
Massey University's Veterinary Teaching Hospital — the
Australasian Veterinary Boards Council (AVBC) — have you yet formally declared your material conflict of interest, as you are legally required to do under
Section 191 of the Corporations Act 2001 (Australia)?
For the avoidance of doubt: That declaration must be entered into the AVBC's Register of Directors' Interests, and must be accompanied by your documented recusal from any
discussions, votes, or oversight regarding Massey University's accreditation status or compliance reviews.
Failure to do so - under Australian corporate law - is a serious breach of
statutory director duties, carrying personal fines and potential disqualification from managing corporations.
_________________________
COMING NEXT:
INSIDE THE MASSEY 'VETERINARY TEACHING' CULTURE:
What Students Are Really Learning . . . & It's NOT Good (PART TWO)
Teaching students to achieve their objectives through
overdosing clients' pets
with
convenience sedation in place of actual "care",
falsification of notes, covert conversion of private property,
complete disregard for the Animal Welfare Act 1999,
complete disregard for the Veterinary Code of Professional Conduct,
digital data scrubbing with disregard for
the Crimes Act 1961 (records tampering),
evasion of accountability (including statutory)
and relying on the
industry regulator's stonewalling and sleights of hand
. . .
and more.
Indeed, it seems
Massey likes its "students" to "get their money's worth".
Ethics, be damned.
