UPDATE TO READERS: Since writing this article, my continuing research has indicated that Harry was likely not only simply sedated (and massively so) for the sake of the ICU staff's convenience, but also to facilitate a multiplicity of training procedures to be conducted upon him - with the intention that the fronting clinician, "Steffi", would present him as requiring urgent "euthanasia" through a sudden natural decline in his condition.
Unfortunately, for Massey management and personnel, I have not only my own memory of him standing strongly on his back legs in his ICU cage at midnight and reaching through the door for comfort, but also now a video of him actively "circling" on the ICU floor, just hours before he was presented to me in a flacid, semi-comatose state with no viable explanation other than some supposedly nature decline.
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: The above indications have not only since been confirmed, but what actually happened to Harry was far worse, and constituted much more than gross malpractice. My latest findings move the entire matter squarely into the category of malfeasance - both at the clinical level and at the highest levels of Massey's management.
The Reckless Practice of 'Convenience Sedation' & the True Cost of Clinical Apathy
When you walk into the Intensive Care Unit of a "teaching" hospital, you expect to find a sanctuary of clinical vigilance. You expect to find practitioners whose pulses quicken at the sound of a patient in distress.
Instead, at Massey’s Companion Animal "Hospital", I found a scene that was as sociopathically detached as it was medically reckless.
I found my blind, senior dog, Harry, screaming in terror in a cold steel cage - a sensory nightmare for an animal who relied on sound and touch to navigate his world. And what did I find the "highly trained" ICU staff doing? I found them huddled together, deep in a jovial social conversation, and also with their collective fascination fixed not on the suffering geriatric patient in their “care”, but the novelty of a newborn kitten.
It's time to ask the hard question about the culture of a veterinary teaching hospital that would place two staff that appear so uncompassionate towards animals that either they or their broader set of colleagues would dangerously sedate a distressed animal - as opposed to administering human comfort, most especially when not in any degree of high activity whatsoever in the ICU ward. in fact the reverse.
The Path of Least Resistance: Convenience Over Compassion
In a healthy clinical culture, the response to a distressed, blind dog is a human hand and a soothing voice. It's the "human comfort" that costs nothing but a moment of empathy.
But empathy requires effort. It requires moving away from the social gossip and the novelty of a kitten to attend to the "boring" work of a senior dog in crisis.
At Massey, the ICU staff apparently chose the path of least resistance:
A state of near-comatose drugged silence through reckless, repeated dosing of massive levels of a drug contraindicated for my Harry, and the kidney impairment the ICU staff knew full well he had. They had his blood test results from that very night. They had his records that showed the results of his kidney ultrasound, at Massey, several months prior. They even had his most recent notes that showed an overreaction to a one-quarter amount of the same drug they chose, regardless, to ply him with (and then potentiated further).
The invoice tells the story that the closed doors of the ICU ward hide.
Rather than receiving human comfort, Harry was, at some point after midnight (the brief time I was allowed with Harry in the ICU ward came to an end at around 12am) administered 200mg - 300mg of Gabapentin (their very unprofessional clinical notes are ambiguous) and a potentiating dose of Prevomax - the very drugs the staff already knew his compromised kidneys could not efficiently process.
To be clear: He wasn't sedated in order to help him; he was sedated to silence him. This is known as "convenience-medicating" - a lazy, dangerous practice that allows staff to continue their "staff tearoom" atmosphere without the inconvenience of a crying patient.
The Clinical Cost of Apathy
This isn't just a "customer service" failure; it's a clinical catastrophe. When staff are so engrossed in their own joviality that they ignore a screaming, blind patient, they miss the subtle cues of actual medical distress. Or,, perhaps more to the point in Massey's case, they have no concern for them. Reaching for the sedatives is a far easier option.
The (very) young and very weak "overseeing" veterinarian whose "deer in the headlights" lack of courage to instruct her ICU staff to act in accordance with the requisite compassion and good ethics, compounded the emotional sterility and other lackings of the ICU ward culture. Offering Harry's owner (me) empty and juvenile platitudes like "everyone here loves animals" - while the evidence to the contrary is screaming some six metres away from them - is an unforgivable indictment of the ICU and broader Companion Animal Hospital environment, as well as on that practitioner's lack of backbone and moral suitability for the job.
By choosing chemical restraint over clinical care, Massey ICU personnel created the very "neurological event" the ICU "vet", "Steffi" used the following day to push Harry's death onto an astonished and completely misinformed and monumentally deceived, owner.
Collectively, they transformed a recoverable, dehydrated dog into a "broken" pharmacological wreck, and then had the audacity to call it "mercy" when they pushed for his execution.
The culture at Massey's ICU isn't one of teaching or healing; it's a culture of contempt (as well as merciless profiteering) . . . for the animals, for the owners who pay handsomely for their supposed "gold standard" levels of "care", and for the Veterinary Code of Conduct itself.
From:
editor@consumeraffairswriter.com <editor@consumeraffairswriter.com>
Sent:
Tuesday, 27 January 2026 4:17 am
To:
'Privacy' <Privacy@massey.ac.nz>
Cc:
'Iain McLachlan' <iain@vetcouncil.org.nz>; 'Liam Shields' <liam@vetcouncil.org.nz>; 'Seton Butler' <seton@vetcouncil.org.nz>; 'enquiries@privacy.org.nz' <enquiries@privacy.org.nz>; 'editor@consumeraffairswriter.com' <editor@consumeraffairswriter.com>
Subject: URGENT: VISUAL EVIDENCE OF CRUELTY AND ILL-TREATMENT: RE: Privacy Request: Kelly 01 2026 - Formal Rejection of Restricted Access and Final Deadline
Ms Mullan
I have now accessed the download link provided, and I have viewed the videos titled “circling” and “testing of vestibulo-ocular reflexes”.
Regarding the reflex video, I am profoundly disturbed by what I have witnessed.
The footage captures a cruelly harsh, vice-like grip – with each finger of the harshly gripping hand complete with fingernails clearly driving hard into Harry’s tiny scalp – as his eyes are forced open for the camera.
The sheer terror in Harry’s eyes as he is manhandled and paraded around for display makes for appalling watching.
It is clear from this recording that Harry was being utilised as a teaching model for the benefit of an audience, rather than being treated as a private, fee-paying patient in crisis and deserving of dignity and harm minimisation.
If this clenching, fingernails-included restraint represents the standard of care for a “premier” teaching hospital, it is a matter of grave concern.
Furthermore, the video titled “circling” shows Harry moving at significant speed. This physical vitality directly contradicts the institutional narrative of a vegetative or collapsed patient.
Further still, this occasional behaviour (when disoriented, as he would have been when separated from me and being blind) – i.e., circling in disorientation – was a known clinical baseline for Harry following the onset of his vestibular syndrome on Easter Sunday, 2024. To characterise this familiar, chronic state as a sudden, terminal neurological collapse is a significant clinical misrepresentation.
These recordings only heighten the necessity of my unrestricted access to the full, unedited record of the EIGHT videos you have admitted to taking. The two videos provided represent only a fraction of Harry’s time in the ICU. As I have stated multiple times now, an institution as highly resourced as Massey University is well-equipped to easily apply standard pixelation technology to address the privacy concerns you purport to be the reason for withholding this majority proportion of the footage.
I continue to demand the immediate release of the remaining six videos, along with the original metadata for all eight recordings, to ensure a transparent and independent review of Harry’s “care”.
The 3:18 PM deadline today remains unchanged with reinforced non-negotiability after viewing these two videos – and especially the vice-like gripping for “vestibular testing” of my clearly terrified little dog.
Jordan Kelly (Ms)
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