Last night, yet another caustic, medically-illogical, internally-panicked anonymous web form submission dropped into my inbox from (as is very obvious to me) the same small tightknit group of Massey ICU insiders . . . the day after I had hit Publish on
this article.
Interestingly, its Sunday 9.23pm arrival just happens to coincide with
Harry’s Sunday 9pm admission to that facility last November 30.
This latest missive expanded on the same ludicrous challenges of past drops – this time, based even more specifically on their obvious direct in-house access to Harry’s Massey ICU records. It demonstrated a worryingly barely even generic-level of grasp on veterinary medicine, protocols and practices (although that was clearly not the author's or authors' own self-estimation) and even spoke with what appeared to be a casual affection for "pentobarb" – a chillingly flippant tone for an internal operator to adopt when discussing a lethal veterinary pharmaceutical used specifically to terminate animals' lives i.e. Pentobarbital sodium.
It was also written with the same juvenility as all previous drops, with the same immature and silly type of fake email address.
The arrival of these emails doesn’t trouble me. In fact, they are flushing out, and increasingly pointing to, the identity of the anonymouses.
What IS troubling is something very different . . . and with the drop of every anonymous dollop of veterinary ignorance, evidence of cultural toxicity, and arrogant “toe digging-in”, these emails display the very thing Massey needs to isolate, unpick, and actually address. But that it clearly is not.
A Little Gone-Rogue State-Within-A-State . . . In Control of YOUR Pet's Life & Outcome
That is, the rogue element that operates with dangerous “state-within-a-state” autonomy in Massey University’s Companion Animal “Hospital” ICU.
I am yet to get a full handle on the degree to which this rogue, arrogant, dangerously ignorant and woefully either uncredentialed or undeservedly credentialed element is simply an extension of the more senior levels of the veterinary establishment’s management . . . versus what they don’t necessarily approve of but have no control over . . . versus what they actually have only a sense of and would rather remain willfully blind to the ward-level realities of.
Let’s look through the window that little rogue ICU clique of anonymous emailers unintentionally but very effectively provides for us . . . and I’ll tell you the point I’m going to get to, here, up front, while I lay out the facts that will help you see it clearly for yourselves:
If Massey’s management and a highly paid and thus assumedly highly skilled external legal firm has no control over a group or groups of staff (however big or small) and allows them to go rogue, or can’t stop them going rogue enough to compromise Massey’s veterinary teaching establishment and its public-facing “Companion Animal Hospital’s” already-crumbling reputation, then it is clear to see that, why, and how, it has nil or next-to-nil control over their hospital floor-level decisions, actions, conduct and culture. The culture that produced what happened to my own dog, Harry, and not only the complete absence of any remorse for it but, in fact, a taunting, teasing barrage of emails from (it has become very obvious to me) those actively responsible for it or for significant components of it.
The Spectacularly Stupid Poking of the Wrong Bear
I have mentioned my corporate reputational, B2B and B2C public relations, and brand management (did I mention that latter part, too?) professional background.
Quite aside from the heinous fact that replicated client accounts now evidence a pattern whereby private clients’ pets are being subjected to undocumented sedation cocktails, unauthorised and invasive clinical procedures, and unvetted student training protocols without their owner’s knowledge or consent . . . the crisis management aspect of this whole disaster is exactly that, an
unmitigated, utter managerial disaster of staggering, international case study-worthy proportions.
Beyond the nub of the matter . . . that it exposed horrendous, systemic failures of ethics, is the complete lack of control combined with the complete incompetence of management at a practice management level, at an institutional divisional level, and at the very upper-most level. That is,
he with whom the buck should stop, Vice-Chancellor Pierre Venter.
A VC who inherited a very bad situation and seems to have agreed to keep making it worse.
More Total Ineffectiveness & Wasteful Budget Evisceration by Massey's High-Flying Legal Eagles
Let’s look at Vice-Chancellor Venter’s total Lack of steering ability over an out-of-control veterinary facility ship. And that look should more rightly start with where the stakes are, literally, life or death: in it’s “Intensive Care Unit”. It would behove Massey’s management to re-acquaint themselves with that seemingly-forgotten full expansion of the “ICU” acronym.
However, my impression is that that is neither his nor his veterinary school dean's most pressing centre of concern. If they have one at all, perhaps it sits more at the level of brand, strategic and risk management. They're not doing well in that regard, either, however.
From that (i.e. brand, strategic and risk management) perspective, whether Venter or Veterinary School Dean Jon Huxley recognise it or not, allowing an internal, uncontrolled clique to autonomously handle a high-stakes crisis by launching an anonymous rearguard action is an absolute legal, regulatory and administrative disaster.
And Massey’s big-budget, national, premier corporate legal firm assumedly handling external services for this major "educational" institution isn’t doing much of a job when it comes to its core business for the uni either i.e. risk mitigation, brand protection, and procedural compliance.
I’ve made numerous mentions of these rogue actors from within their walls in my various recent articles. One would think these big-buck legal eagles would be enlightening their client’s executive team as to the fact that their behaviour is doing the institution massive damage.
Let me count the ways:
1. Evidence of Management’s Complete Lack of Administrative & Staff Control
Not only have I documented the ongoing arrival of these anonymous communications – the contents of which explicitly rely on proprietary, internal hospital records – but I have publicly stated that every single transmission is being handed directly to the Ministry for Primary Industries’ team of senior investigators.
Yet, astoundingly, despite the university and its legal counsel being fully aware that this unvetted data leak is actively occurring, the individual or individuals responsible have escalated both their frequency and their intensity. Boldly going where almost certainly no man (or perhaps more accurately, woman) has gone before.
If management possessed effective administrative oversight or basic network compliance control, an unauthorised insider would not be permitted to continuously compromise the institution's legal position in real time.
I rest my case.
2. High-Risk Exposure Under the Privacy Act
By sending an email like the one I received last night, explicitly referencing details of Harry's paperwork, records, and specific administrative forms, an employee is stepping into a massive legal minefield.
Using internal institutional records or specialised knowledge to compose unauthorised, anonymous communications to a member of the public – especially one already actively engaged in formal legislative disputes with the University – is a profound breach of internal security
and of the Privacy Act 2020.
It completely undercuts the standard
"we take your privacy seriously" corporate homily. It makes the university look disorganised, unprofessional, and extremely loose with internal client data. Because, clearly, it IS disorganised, unprofessional, and extremely loose with internal client data.
Competent external lawyers spend their entire lives trying to
prevent staff from creating unvetted, rogue electronic paper trails.
3. Contaminating An Active Government Investigation
I have a 342-page evidential report and a 13-page supplementary report sitting with the Ministry for Primary Industries' Animal Welfare Complex Cases Unit.
In any high-stakes regulatory investigation, the absolute golden rule for an institution's staff is
total silence. You do not talk, you do not engage, and you certainly do not send anonymous, provocative emails to the complainant.
By acting out of personal spite, this little gaggle of reckless individuals is actively handing me – and by extension, the government investigators – real-time proof of a toxic, defensive institutional culture. And one that has real and (in my case, at least) lethal consequences for clients' pets.
They are literally giving the regulatory body ammunition to show that the hospital's staff lack basic oversight, professional boundaries, and compliance control.
4. Creating Massive Public Liability
Corporate legal advisors know that an institution's brand is incredibly fragile.
While a firm can build an institutional shield using formal, polite, heavily-vetted legal correspondence, that entire shield is instantly shattered when a staffer goes rogue in someone’s inbox. Especially the wrong person’s inbox.
(You’d have thought they’d have had the basic comprehension capacity to work out by now that given that
they covertly, mercilessly, and inhumanely utilised,
subjected to at least 15 straight hours of severe torturous physical and psychological trauma, and then
killed, precisely the wrong woman’s dog
–
treating a private, fee-paying client’s deeply beloved and treasured pet as an expendable asset for institutional convenience, student training, and commercial profit
– that continuing to provoke that same furious, outspoken and clearly capable woman would probably continue to guarantee things
will not end well either for them individually, or for the
university at large.)
From a strategic perspective alone, let alone any moral or ethical concerns, the
university's “leadership” and its
“legal counsel’s” decision to allow Massey’s veterinary “hospital” staff to continuously provoke a professional with my specific background is an act of
absolute cumulative, high-impact, self-sabotage.
By allowing a tiny, panicked core to arrogantly take it upon themselves to mount a private, defensive rearguard action (because they know
their specific actions are under the microscope) Massey demonstrates – including to its insurers – that the university's risk management is held completely hostage by a small core of reckless, boundary-less staffers. And that core of rogue operators is prepared to willfully sabotage the institution’s legal standing by
trolling a public consumer affairs writer . . . as recklessly as the
recklessly catastrophic convenience sedative cocktails with which her
defenceless, distressed, disoriented little blind dog was repeatedly hammered for the
convenience of socialising ICU staffers.
Of course, there’s one other possibility:
Maybe the left hand genuinely has no idea what the right hand is doing.
So maybe start there, Vice-Chancellor Venter.
Maybe figure out how many dogs or other species of private fee-paying pets are leaving in a worse state than that in which they arrived . . . and include in that tally,
those that don’t leave at all.
Then, if you isolate
those causing that root problem, your actual reputational problem goes away all by itself.
With the exception of those you've already converted to your own
internally profitable, torturous utilisation and then killed, of course.
Like Harry.
