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‘A Vet Gone to the Dogs Speech presented to the Montreal Rotary Club on January 6, 2000
by Charles Danten

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, guests and members of the Montreal Rotary Club.

I think you all saw my book last time I was here. Here it is again: it’s called An Angry Veterinarian: Essay on the Animal Condition.

Well, I’m here today to give you a few insights on its content, and to tell you why I’ve “gone to the dogs.”

Do not let the title misguide you though. Although I was angry at one time, you cannot tell by reading this book. It is a rather soft-spoken book.

Through personal anecdotes it explores our relationship with pets. It takes an original, inside look at the pet animal industry — from the consumer to the producer, from the healers to the animal defenders.

In this book I stick to facts and make very few comments or judgment calls. It’s meant to be a very serious and academic book, clinically documented by over forty pages of notes, references, and tables — the result of twenty years of reflection and three years of writing.

Although some parts of the information it contains are known to many of you, few have ever seen the big picture and in such detail. The result is very surprising and, I would say, quite disturbing.

You see, we all tend to think, or rather, we like to believe that overall, pets are well treated by our society — as well as, sometimes even better than our own children.

Our relationship with pets is thought to be a reflection of our humanity, and we tend to equate the ownership of an animal with love, respect, and compassion.

As I will attempt to demonstrate, perception is seldom reality.

There’s a darker side to all this, and until we look into it, it’s hardly possible to bring a meaningful change.

From the beginning of my career, I was never quite comfortable with my job and what our society is doing to animals and nature.

I could never reconcile the welfare of my patients and animals in general with the interests of my clients and my financial obligations.

You see, vets are not as much at the service of animals as they are at the service of their clients.

They pay his bills, and to be successful, he has to make a lot of concessions that I was unable to make eventually.

We have a very romantic idea about what a vet actually does. We all think he spends his days like James Herriot, that famous English vet, flying to the rescue of sick and injured animals.

Although that part of his work does exist, rather than curative, the work of a vet in general practice is mostly preventive and very routine.

He is responsible for the alteration, the maintenance, the repair, and disposal of a commodity that we are consuming in unprecedented quantities.

He softens and humanizes the use of animals, but he also condones it by his silence, his active promotion, and cooperation. ‘

Yeah, this former vet is a freaking nutjob. Anyone who associates with ‘liberation’ be it animals or earth is an extremist sociopath. Screw him.