open other end

It’s a little unexpected when the truly evil aspects of our own society strike somewhere close to home.

Our vet is, or rather was, also the vet of an elderly neighbour of my mother-in-law. This lady is terminally ill, and when she went into hospital a couple of months ago for what was expected to be the last time, she left her dog in the vet’s care with instructions to find it a home. A long term friend of decades, the vet is, or was, a co-executor of her will (the other is, or was, my mother-in-law). The vet found a home for the dog with his veterinary nurse. This last bit has become controversial, since the neighbour now says the arrangement was meant to be temporary. However everyone involved knew that it was intended to be permanent.

The neighbour, against medical advice discharged herself form hospital. My mother-in-law dreaded this eventuality as the neighbour is mostly unable to care for herself and has been demanding help from her neighbours, but has over the years been so ungracious in her friendships that she’s driven erstwhile helpers away. Some have outright described her as “evil”. In truth she is simply self-centred and manipulative, something that worked for her most of her life (she’s unfeasibly thin now, but apparently always was and once sported even more implausible implants). There’s no way at all she can care for a dog without relying on help from the neighbours, and most neighbours won’t even talk to her anymore given past experiences. This is a boisterous and energetic dog that becomes impossible unless it’s walked twice a day.

I should actually set the scene here – we are talking about a small block of council flats for the elderly. There are 8 units centred on the one courtyard shared by this lady and my mother-in-law. The dog’s presence will affect them all, if only out of concern for its welfare. More than that though, with blood thinning medication such as Warfarin[TM], one of a cocktail currently keeping her alive, any fall or cut could easily lead to a fatal bleed. I should point out this dog is not just boisterous but exhibits what the people fro the RSPCA refer to in their marvelously euphemistic temperament evaluation sheets as “mouthiness”. He bites – playfully sure, but hard enough for this to be a potential problem.

Anyhow, the neighbour decided she wanted her dog back. Now sure, she could pay someone to walk him, and have people in to help care for them both. She hadn’t really been able to afford this, though, and all things considered the vet has balked at giving the dog back. The dog has bonded with the veterinary nurse, and is unquestionably extremely well cared for. The veterinary nurse has offered to bring him for extended visits, but this has been rebuffed. The neighbour simply wants him back, period. This lead to a standoff – the neighbour got no satisfaction from the Police who frankly, most likely saw the vet’s point. So she went to Channel Seven.

Enter stage right one Gavin Alder, a reporter for Today Tonight. According to his bio, he’s wanted to be a journalist since he was 10 and wrote a poem about French testing in the Pacific. I’m not convinced that this dream will ever come true – he certainly isn’t one now. Maybe it’s in the past – he was once a sports reporter and in some circles that passes for journalism. He’s built like a rugby forward, though his bio says he plays soccer.

This bruiser of a man followed the veterinary nurse as she walks the dog every day for a week or two with his camera crew, and in the footage that did go to air during this last week had cornered her alone in an isolated park. Pestering her and suggesting that “We can take the dog home now”, the fellow clearly used his intimidating physical presence to bully the poor girl. Even in footage they showed, she ends up carrying the dog. As a dog owner myself I can say that this is something you do when you feel the dog is threatened, not for any other reason.

In any case, needless to say they went to air with the headline ‘Dognapped!’ and portray the vet and the nurse as refusing a dying woman’s last wish as well as being legally shaky ground, being dog thieves and all. The broadcast interview AND hidden camera footage with the vet – as though they weren’t sure how they wanted to play him, and took the hidden camera stuff in case he didn’t give an interview. They made a lot of his statement expressing his (in any other context admirable) professional commitment to the welfare of the dog.  They clearly spent a lot of time with the neighbour, who eventually managed a tear for the camera. I imagine this involved onions – the woman is tough as boot leather.

So since then the vet has been receiving death threats, including threats to firebomb his clinic. This isn’t a small clinic, and he does a lot of surgery so at any given time there are several animals either recovering from surgery or due to go on the table. The upshot is he’s afraid to leave, because if something did happen he’d have to be there to save the animals. The clinic is taking hundreds of threatening or otherwise abusive calls a day at this point. It’s so extreme that neighbouring vet clinics have felt the need to put up signs distancing themselves from his as they have been targeted by creeps who don’t let a little thing like mistaken identity hold them up. And I gather Today Tonight think of all this as a great success. They had the veterinary nurse’s partner in their trailers lately, as they seem to have been targeted directly also.

I don’t really blame the neighbour in this – she’s just a self-centred person  who doesn’t understand the effects of her actions here. My mother-in-law is less generous than I am here, she had been getting the woman’s mail for her. She has returned the key to the letterbox and refuses to have anything to do with her. She’s disgusted mostly because the vet has been a loyal and long-suffering friend for so many years.

I do blame the Today Tonight crew and most especially Alder, who unquestionably are aware of the consequences of their actions and have decided it’s worth it. We demand and fight for free expression and a free press, and Channel Seven gives us these despicable mongrels.

This vet is the best vet we’ve ever dealt with, and is also a fine human being whom I trust implicitly, without question. To think his practice and viability as a business could be in jeopardy for a cheap ratings stunt is just sickening.