Newspaper articles, advertising, illusion, and love
Most of you who receive this monthly email don’t know me from Adam. All you know is that it’s for people who love dogs. Some of you might even read it!
I wonder if you know how strange it feels to send emails about something as personal as love – the love of dogs – to thousands of strangers? For just as you don’t know who I am, I don’t know you. Even though hundreds of Canine Health Concern members are amongst the people receiving Circle of Friends, I don’t know all of them personally, either.
Of course, writers and journalists are used to speaking to strangers – but they have an advantage over me because they write to formats, within norms that are accepted within society. The bigger the newspaper’s circulation, the more research has gone into delivering what people want to hear, how they want to hear it. I, on the other hand, have chosen to speak of issues that wiser souls fear to speak of, and of things that aren’t accepted within the wider society. The problem is that, whilst some people are glad to hear what I have to say, many are not. And there is often fallout.
National press coverage
An article appeared recently in the UK’s Daily Mail that featured Canine Health Concern’s work, and our message.
The Daily Mail is one of the largest circulation newspapers in the UK, going out to millions of people. Inclusion of our message in this newspaper was of great importance to me, because it featured the fact that vaccines can cause harm, including neurological damage, to dogs. The journalist simplified the term ‘neurological damage’ for the general public by calling it autism-like symptoms. Since dogs aren’t generally accepted to have autism, I took a risk in going along with the angle the journalist had chosen. The alternative was to not get the information publicised at all.
The article also informed millions of people that we do not need to vaccinate our dogs every year, which is why I approached the journalist in the first place. If one person read that article and cancelled their dog’s unnecessary booster appointment as a result, and if that dog didn’t have the vaccine reaction he was otherwise destined to have, then the article will have done its job.
Before submitting the piece to the Daily Mail’s news desk, the journalist did something very unusual. She read the article out to me on the phone. Journalists rarely do this because we ordinary folk tend to get hot under the collar about details, whereas mass communications experts are working to another agenda – they want to summarise the details and simplify the story so that it has maximum, fast, impact. Whereas I will write whole books about vaccine damage, a good journalist is doing her job, and doing it well, if she condenses an entire book into 800 words, or less.
The problem with doing it this way is that you’re not going to cover all the ifs, buts and sub-clauses. The benefit is that you’ll reach, and possibly influence, people who are used to sound bytes. On that basis, I was delighted with what the journalist had written. True, some of the details could have been expanded upon, and the angle could have been different – but the crux of the story held strong.
However, once the sub-editors on the news desk had finished with it, its overall meaning had changed. Most devastating for me was the fact that quotes from me and Richard Allport, a courageous vet, had been considerably shortened, and non-supportive quotes from the Veterinary Medicines Directorate and the Dogs Trust had been inserted into the piece. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255863/Vaccines-making-dogs-sick-vets-cash-in.html
In many ways, I told myself, this isn’t such a bad thing. At least the story was covered. You have no idea how difficult it is to get a story into the national newspapers. You’re competing against hundreds and thousands of other people who all want their story heard. Making contact with a good journalist, in itself, is a major success. So despite the piece not being what I would have written, or how I would have written it, at least the subject had been covered by the mainstream media. I was very grateful, and I’m also aware that there’s a lot of talent involved in this sort of journalism.
Corporate advertising
Contrast my experience of obtaining media coverage with the marketing activities of major multi-nationals. They have massive – multi-million – marketing budgets, and the financial clout to pay for advertisements saying exactly what they want them to say. When you’re advertising, you don’t run the risk of having a journalist alter the tone and content of what you want to say.
A factor in the advertising industry is something they call “O T C”, or Opportunity To See. This refers to the fact that the more often you put a message in front of someone, the more they will believe you. The aim is to get your brand name in front of prospective customers as many times as possible. For example, Heinz beans may, or may not, be better than lesser-known brands. But because the branding of Heinz beans and the OTC is greater than any other beans, you’re more likely to believe that Heinz beans are the best beans. In order to get a high OTC figure, you have to spend millions of dollars and repeat the commercial many times over many years.
For example, an advertising campaign might show pictures of pretty doggies alongside a can of pet food, and millions of people will go out and buy that pet food. The advertisement will probably not say anything about what, precisely, is in the food, or whether or not it will produce health – just the mere act of flashing the brand name in front of you over and over again (OTC) will sell the product.
Have a think about this: In the early days of the CHC campaign, I was invited to speak at a seminar held at the Royal Veterinary College near London. As part of my research for the talk, I contacted an organisation called M.E.A.L. which analyses advertising spend, and they informed me that in 1994, Pedigree Petfoods (part of the Mars group) spent £34,465,000.00 on advertising in the UK. To spell this out, because I think it’s quite an amazing figure, that’s thirty-four million, four hundred and sixty five thousand pounds, spent in one year, in the UK alone, on advertising alone (i.e., not on sponsorship, public relations, direct mail, exhibitions or anything else – just on advertising) to tell us that their pet food was the best pet food.
Corporations do not spend this sort of money if they don’t get results from spending this sort of money. Neither would they, as they do, pay lecturers in veterinary colleges to lecture about ‘nutrition’ if they didn’t see a return on investment. Pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t sponsor symposiums and seminars, or pay for ‘educational’ fancy dinners and skiing holidays for vets, if they didn’t know that they would be repaid handsomely for their investment. Nor would multi-nationals pay sales reps to visit veterinary practices to sell their drugs; and pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t employ pretty vivacious young women to take medical doctors out to dinner and chat pleasantly about the latest drugs – unless it was worth their while in hard financial terms.
On the 16th of March this year, Marketing Week magazine announced that Mars Petcare was launching a TV ad campaign to support the launch of its Whiskas Simply cat food range. This one brand is to be backed by a £4.5 million marketing investment for the year. Marketing analysts will now sit back and watch the Whiskas Simply cat food range reach sales targets in line with advertising spend. Even this mention here will have alerted you to this new brand, and if you’re a cat owner, chances are that I’ll have helped boost sales in some small way, irrespective of what’s in the food and what it might do for your cat.
Life for those who do not have marketing budgets
By contrast, those of us who are not multi-national corporations but who feel that we have something vital to say about how to keep a dog (or cat) healthy, are left with very little choice. The word is ‘impotence’.
We can’t buy advertising space or commercials on TV. We can’t pay a direct mail house to send out mailshots to targeted dog owners. We don’t have a budget for sponsorship – we can’t sponsor dog shows, for example. We don’t have sales reps. We can’t hand out bursaries or research grants to veterinary teaching establishments. We can’t pay for vets to go on holidays. We can’t afford to put leaflets and posters in all of the veterinary hospitals in the country, or negotiate discounts with vets so they stock our products. Nor can we hand a few thousand pounds to vets to help them start new practices up, and tie them into our products for years. And we certainly can’t pay the salaries of the people our government appoints to pass veterinary products as ‘safe’, or engage the services of political lobbying firms.
We just have the internet (which is why you’re getting this email), our website, newsletters, a DVD that our members helped to fund, and the leaflets that membership subscriptions allow us to pay for. Leaflets are circulated by people for free – by members who love the dogs, who agree with what we have to say. We also have books which, because we’re not Bill Gates, we can only sell, rather than give away free. And sometimes, very rarely, our efforts pay off and a national newspaper or TV show will give voice to the natural healthcare message for dogs.
Frustratingly, the minority voice – even when it’s heard – is usually diluted. They always have to include the Establishment view to ‘balance’ the article or TV show.
If you see a programme on TV about vets, you won’t see someone like me being invited to explain why the some of the drugs they use ought to be questioned. There won’t be a natural rearer on the show explaining why annual shots are unnecessary, or why a non-steroidal pain killer should be a last resort. If a vet examines a horse and sees that his gums and inner eyelids are yellow, as I have done, and you then watch that vet vaccinate a clearly sick horse, there will be no-one there to question the vet’s actions or training, or explain that vaccines are for use in healthy animals only.
Unfortunately, because we aren’t paying for our message to be heard (because we can’t), and because we are battling against the overwhelming voices of multi-billion dollar international industries, we gratefully take what we can get. I shook the whole time while watching the World in Action TV documentary Canine Health Concern’s work was featured in – because I had no idea before it was broadcast whether it would represent us accurately or not. I had to take it on trust. (You can see it for free if you click here. )
Imagine my surprise, then, when I received an email from a vet who felt that the Daily Mail article was unfairly critical of vets and that it had defamed an entire profession. He made it clear that vets are in a difficult position with regard to vaccines, and spoke of a need to change vaccine licenses. He pointed out that it is a criminal offence for vets to use a medicine outside of its license. If the license says it should be boosted the next year, vets are taking a risk if they don’t boost the next year. This is despite the science which shows that MLV vaccines are good for years or life.
Ironically, this is exactly why I contacted the journalist in the first place. We (me, 17 vets, and over a hundred CHC members) had written to the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) – the UK government body that licenses veterinary vaccines and drugs - to demand a change to vaccine licenses, and the withdrawal of one-year vaccines. The letter was written because there is no science to support annual vaccination, and each time you vaccinate you risk serious adverse reactions. Put simply, an unnecessary vaccine has the potential to kill your dog.
Unfortunately, for the purposes of the Daily Mail, a group of people sending a letter to the VMD was a non-starter as far as a story goes. It needed more pizzazz for the general public, hence the angle taken. So what should I do? Should I refuse to get involved with national newspaper articles unless they publish the story exactly the way I want them to publish it (which they never will)? Or should I take a broader view, knowing that any airing of the subject would exert pressure upon the VMD to reconsider its licensing policies?
And if the journalist felt it necessary to mention that vets are cashing in on unnecessary boosters to make the story more sexy and meet editorial requirements, should I object? Could I even object?
I mean, are vets cashing in by administering a veterinary product that doesn’t need to be administered? Well, I guess they are – booster income represents a significant proportion of practice income. And are they potentially causing harm to the animals? Well, yes, they are. Should I consider the feelings of vets over and above the wellbeing of the animals? Or should I make an assumption that vets have broad shoulders and need to step up to the plate and be part of the movement towards change … whereas animals, once injected with a vaccine they do not need, have no option but to experience the potential consequences – such as epilepsy, behavioural changes, arthritis, skin problems, cancer, leukaemia, and other auto-immune diseases?
If a whole profession is causing harm, albeit because the ‘law’ says they must, should we be kind to them, try not to upset them, get them to like us, and refrain from standing up for those who cannot speak, and who have no choice? It’s a tough decision for someone, like me, who loves peace and who would never willingly hurt another living being. It’s difficult to know when it’s important and justified to speak the truth, whether or not others want to hear that truth.
Coverage in a veterinary magazine
Thankfully, I was also given the opportunity to speak specifically to vets, in Veterinary Times. Although this was another article reported by a journalist, it was a fair piece. And because Veterinary Times isn’t a mass market publication, it concentrated on the central issue, which is that we were calling for the VMD to withdraw one-year licenses for vaccines. (Veterinary Times article)
I went out of my way to emphasise to the Veterinary Times reporter that I do not hate vets (many of my friends are vets), and she kindly reflected this. I followed up by sending a letter to the editor, making the science known and adding that the VMD is preventing vets from acting ethically by allowing one-year vaccines. I shared this letter with the vet who thought vets were treated unfairly in the Daily Mail.
Unfortunately, the unhappy vet emailed, saying, “an uncharitable person might conclude that you are more concerned with selling books, developing your personal iconography, and creating a sense of anti-vet paranoia than you are with actually achieving your stated aim of changing vaccination policy”.
It’s not unusual for people to write to me to tell me that I’m only writing books and sharing information about canine health for the money. They don’t know that Canine Health Concern is a not-for-profit organisation and that I don’t get paid for the work I do. Neither do they appreciate that it’s very rare for anyone writing books for the dog market to even remotely make a reasonable living out of it. It’s a specialised market with a limited readership. Jackie Collins I am not.
Ironically, this vet’s email came in at the same time as my husband Rob and I were anguishing about how we might find the money to buy a puppy. Many of you shared my grief when I wrote of the passing of Gwinnie and Daniel last year, two of my Golden Retriever friends. Many of you wrote back to me and shared your feelings about your own loved-ones, and your own grief.
She must be mad!
Risking speaking of something else that is not generally accepted within our society, I have been positively torturing myself about how we might manage to bring Gwinnie and Dannie back home. (Yes, I believe that, sometimes, our departed friends will take on a new body and come back to us. I also believe that Gwinnie and Dannie are waiting to come back to us. So here I am stating my truth, knowing that left-brain-dominant people are going to have a field day and decide I’m nuts.) But there you go.
Thousands of years ago, the Yoga Vasishtha stated that the world is an illusion created by the mind. The Talmud said, "We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are."
It’s all an illusion
Human beings are programmed from birth to believe what they believe. Our parents give us our values, reinforced by the schooling system. Society places importance upon left-brain attributes such as maths and science, and ridicules right-brain attributes such as connectedness, wonder and a sense of the Divine. So if someone like me states in public that they believe that the spirit cannot die, and that it can return to the earth plane in a new body, they must be nuts – according to one half of a lump of meat called the brain.
Anyhow, although one part of me had faith and assumed that a way would be found to bring my friends back to me, another part of me (my left brain, no doubt) didn’t believe that we could find the £800 or so that one puppy costs. Also, because Edward isn’t used to being the only dog and he needed a friend, we went looking for a rescue dog. We found a tiny three-year-old boy, a Papillon, who has had a difficult start in life, and we’ll be collecting him from the rescue coordinator next week. His name is Georgie, and if anyone can help Georgie to like men and refrain from biting them, my gentle husband Rob can!
The earth has many angels
People who know us, who are members of Canine Health Concern, generally know that Rob and I aren’t getting rich on the back of the dogs. They know that the opposite is the case. People who don’t know us, however, can be forgiven for thinking that we must be running this organisation in order to get something out of it. Society isn’t used to people doing things because they need doing, rather than for personal gain (although, it has to be said, I’ve met quite a few people in the dog world who work without pay for the sake of the dogs).
Last week, a fellow dog lover gifted me with a book called, “Zero Limits” by Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len. The book shares a Hawaiian spiritual practice that accepts that we are all of us responsible for the reality we see in front of our eyes. (The world as we individually know it is an illusion created by our memories.) Very simply, the practice seeks to heal the problems of the world by taking responsibility for the suffering we see and feel, and forgiving each situation. The basic practice is to say to your Divine self:
I love you.
I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
So, for example, if you – like me – cannot afford to buy a puppy, the practice is that you take responsibility for your feeling of lack, and love and forgive yourself for the drama you have created. You apologise for the beliefs and memories (programming) that created this apparent lack. You ask your Divine self to forgive you. You express gratitude.
And this is what I have been doing.
Yesterday, I received another email, from a CHC member. This lady, Barbara Storey, has, without my knowing, been speaking to other CHC members to tell them that we have heard our puppy, or puppies, calling, but that we don’t have the funds to pay for them. Barbara wrote:
Last Friday I sent out a letter to the CHC members I know and asked if they would like to help by donating to a puppy fund – I also asked that they would send copies of the letter on to any other members they might know. I described it as throwing a pebble into a pool of CHC members hoping the ripples will radiate out to find everyone.
The fact is Catherine there are lots of us who love you and Rob very much and we want to thank you for all you do for us and all the dogs and what better way could there be than to help you have two new babies.
The fund today stands at £705 and it contains lots of cheques. There is I am sure more to come – but as I am going away next week I wanted you to have what has arrived so far and most importantly I want you to start looking for the puppies.
Everyone who has sent a cheque has sent it with love and thanks and they are all wondering why they had not thought of it!
In fact, we received the cheques today before sending this bulletin out, and the total stands at £930!!
Please note that I am categorically not telling you what Barbara has done in order to prompt you to send a cheque! I’m telling you for two other reasons. The first is to give testimony to the power of love and forgiveness. Love is the Creative Principle. Love is what we are made of; it is our connection with the Divine. It is love that built the puppy fund. I can’t tell you how red my nose was, and how the tears were shed; I can’t tell you how full of anticipation I am, and how I look forward to meeting Gwinnie and Dannie again. Yes, there is also some embarrassment, but knowing that the donations were made with love has cancelled out any potential shame.
The second reason I’m telling you about this is to encourage you to buy that book – Zero Limits by Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len – and try the practice in your own life.
Based upon the rationale behind the Hawaiian practice, I can’t help but conclude that – if we all create our own reality – then the reality I created and which has driven me for the past 16 years is in serious need of love, healing and forgiveness.
It requires that I take personal responsibility for the government licensing authorities around the world, the veterinary profession, and the dilemma it faces regarding over-vaccination. I also take personal responsibility for the dogs, cats, and humans whose lives have been ruined by unnecessary and unsafe shots.
I love you.
I am sorry I have projected this pain onto you.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
As for the vet who emailed me, I also take personal responsibility for the many excellent insights he had about the dilemma facing vets, and lovingly project Right Action into his Being. And if he’s still angry with me, I will work to heal my projection of anger with love.
The Torah states that he who heals one person heals the whole world entire. And, as Sophie (a Golden Retriever) told me, we heal the world by loving and being loved.
Simple, yes. But true.
I would like to add one last insight, and this is that the Hawaiian spiritual practice is entirely in keeping with the Christian faith. Christ brought the message of love to the world, and – importantly – the injunction that we must not judge one another. On the cross, as he was being crucified, he said, “Forgive them Father, they know not what they do”. After that important act of forgiveness, Christ was resurrected.
It occurs to me that people of faith around the world are currently waiting for a new earth. Some call it the second coming of Christ; the Hindu religion calls it the Golden Age. Mayan prophesies give us the year 2012.
White Eagle tells us that the life of Christ is a blueprint for all spiritual aspirants (“All these things I do shall ye do and more.”) Could it be that we must find forgiveness for ourselves and each other before the new age can come?
I love you.
I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
The lion shall lie down with the lamb, and little Georgie, our rescue Papillon, will feel so loved that biting will be a thing of the past.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it’s true: that love and forgiveness will create a new world for every human and every animal on the planet?
Most of you who receive this monthly email don’t know me from Adam. All you know is that it’s for people who love dogs. Some of you might even read it!
I wonder if you know how strange it feels to send emails about something as personal as love – the love of dogs – to thousands of strangers? For just as you don’t know who I am, I don’t know you. Even though hundreds of Canine Health Concern members are amongst the people receiving Circle of Friends, I don’t know all of them personally, either.
Of course, writers and journalists are used to speaking to strangers – but they have an advantage over me because they write to formats, within norms that are accepted within society. The bigger the newspaper’s circulation, the more research has gone into delivering what people want to hear, how they want to hear it. I, on the other hand, have chosen to speak of issues that wiser souls fear to speak of, and of things that aren’t accepted within the wider society. The problem is that, whilst some people are glad to hear what I have to say, many are not. And there is often fallout.
National press coverage
An article appeared recently in the UK’s Daily Mail that featured Canine Health Concern’s work, and our message.
The Daily Mail is one of the largest circulation newspapers in the UK, going out to millions of people. Inclusion of our message in this newspaper was of great importance to me, because it featured the fact that vaccines can cause harm, including neurological damage, to dogs. The journalist simplified the term ‘neurological damage’ for the general public by calling it autism-like symptoms. Since dogs aren’t generally accepted to have autism, I took a risk in going along with the angle the journalist had chosen. The alternative was to not get the information publicised at all.
The article also informed millions of people that we do not need to vaccinate our dogs every year, which is why I approached the journalist in the first place. If one person read that article and cancelled their dog’s unnecessary booster appointment as a result, and if that dog didn’t have the vaccine reaction he was otherwise destined to have, then the article will have done its job.
Before submitting the piece to the Daily Mail’s news desk, the journalist did something very unusual. She read the article out to me on the phone. Journalists rarely do this because we ordinary folk tend to get hot under the collar about details, whereas mass communications experts are working to another agenda – they want to summarise the details and simplify the story so that it has maximum, fast, impact. Whereas I will write whole books about vaccine damage, a good journalist is doing her job, and doing it well, if she condenses an entire book into 800 words, or less.
The problem with doing it this way is that you’re not going to cover all the ifs, buts and sub-clauses. The benefit is that you’ll reach, and possibly influence, people who are used to sound bytes. On that basis, I was delighted with what the journalist had written. True, some of the details could have been expanded upon, and the angle could have been different – but the crux of the story held strong.
However, once the sub-editors on the news desk had finished with it, its overall meaning had changed. Most devastating for me was the fact that quotes from me and Richard Allport, a courageous vet, had been considerably shortened, and non-supportive quotes from the Veterinary Medicines Directorate and the Dogs Trust had been inserted into the piece. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255863/Vaccines-making-dogs-sick-vets-cash-in.html
In many ways, I told myself, this isn’t such a bad thing. At least the story was covered. You have no idea how difficult it is to get a story into the national newspapers. You’re competing against hundreds and thousands of other people who all want their story heard. Making contact with a good journalist, in itself, is a major success. So despite the piece not being what I would have written, or how I would have written it, at least the subject had been covered by the mainstream media. I was very grateful, and I’m also aware that there’s a lot of talent involved in this sort of journalism.
Corporate advertising
Contrast my experience of obtaining media coverage with the marketing activities of major multi-nationals. They have massive – multi-million – marketing budgets, and the financial clout to pay for advertisements saying exactly what they want them to say. When you’re advertising, you don’t run the risk of having a journalist alter the tone and content of what you want to say.
A factor in the advertising industry is something they call “O T C”, or Opportunity To See. This refers to the fact that the more often you put a message in front of someone, the more they will believe you. The aim is to get your brand name in front of prospective customers as many times as possible. For example, Heinz beans may, or may not, be better than lesser-known brands. But because the branding of Heinz beans and the OTC is greater than any other beans, you’re more likely to believe that Heinz beans are the best beans. In order to get a high OTC figure, you have to spend millions of dollars and repeat the commercial many times over many years.
For example, an advertising campaign might show pictures of pretty doggies alongside a can of pet food, and millions of people will go out and buy that pet food. The advertisement will probably not say anything about what, precisely, is in the food, or whether or not it will produce health – just the mere act of flashing the brand name in front of you over and over again (OTC) will sell the product.
Have a think about this: In the early days of the CHC campaign, I was invited to speak at a seminar held at the Royal Veterinary College near London. As part of my research for the talk, I contacted an organisation called M.E.A.L. which analyses advertising spend, and they informed me that in 1994, Pedigree Petfoods (part of the Mars group) spent £34,465,000.00 on advertising in the UK. To spell this out, because I think it’s quite an amazing figure, that’s thirty-four million, four hundred and sixty five thousand pounds, spent in one year, in the UK alone, on advertising alone (i.e., not on sponsorship, public relations, direct mail, exhibitions or anything else – just on advertising) to tell us that their pet food was the best pet food.
Corporations do not spend this sort of money if they don’t get results from spending this sort of money. Neither would they, as they do, pay lecturers in veterinary colleges to lecture about ‘nutrition’ if they didn’t see a return on investment. Pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t sponsor symposiums and seminars, or pay for ‘educational’ fancy dinners and skiing holidays for vets, if they didn’t know that they would be repaid handsomely for their investment. Nor would multi-nationals pay sales reps to visit veterinary practices to sell their drugs; and pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t employ pretty vivacious young women to take medical doctors out to dinner and chat pleasantly about the latest drugs – unless it was worth their while in hard financial terms.
On the 16th of March this year, Marketing Week magazine announced that Mars Petcare was launching a TV ad campaign to support the launch of its Whiskas Simply cat food range. This one brand is to be backed by a £4.5 million marketing investment for the year. Marketing analysts will now sit back and watch the Whiskas Simply cat food range reach sales targets in line with advertising spend. Even this mention here will have alerted you to this new brand, and if you’re a cat owner, chances are that I’ll have helped boost sales in some small way, irrespective of what’s in the food and what it might do for your cat.
Life for those who do not have marketing budgets
By contrast, those of us who are not multi-national corporations but who feel that we have something vital to say about how to keep a dog (or cat) healthy, are left with very little choice. The word is ‘impotence’.
We can’t buy advertising space or commercials on TV. We can’t pay a direct mail house to send out mailshots to targeted dog owners. We don’t have a budget for sponsorship – we can’t sponsor dog shows, for example. We don’t have sales reps. We can’t hand out bursaries or research grants to veterinary teaching establishments. We can’t pay for vets to go on holidays. We can’t afford to put leaflets and posters in all of the veterinary hospitals in the country, or negotiate discounts with vets so they stock our products. Nor can we hand a few thousand pounds to vets to help them start new practices up, and tie them into our products for years. And we certainly can’t pay the salaries of the people our government appoints to pass veterinary products as ‘safe’, or engage the services of political lobbying firms.
We just have the internet (which is why you’re getting this email), our website, newsletters, a DVD that our members helped to fund, and the leaflets that membership subscriptions allow us to pay for. Leaflets are circulated by people for free – by members who love the dogs, who agree with what we have to say. We also have books which, because we’re not Bill Gates, we can only sell, rather than give away free. And sometimes, very rarely, our efforts pay off and a national newspaper or TV show will give voice to the natural healthcare message for dogs.
Frustratingly, the minority voice – even when it’s heard – is usually diluted. They always have to include the Establishment view to ‘balance’ the article or TV show.
If you see a programme on TV about vets, you won’t see someone like me being invited to explain why the some of the drugs they use ought to be questioned. There won’t be a natural rearer on the show explaining why annual shots are unnecessary, or why a non-steroidal pain killer should be a last resort. If a vet examines a horse and sees that his gums and inner eyelids are yellow, as I have done, and you then watch that vet vaccinate a clearly sick horse, there will be no-one there to question the vet’s actions or training, or explain that vaccines are for use in healthy animals only.
Unfortunately, because we aren’t paying for our message to be heard (because we can’t), and because we are battling against the overwhelming voices of multi-billion dollar international industries, we gratefully take what we can get. I shook the whole time while watching the World in Action TV documentary Canine Health Concern’s work was featured in – because I had no idea before it was broadcast whether it would represent us accurately or not. I had to take it on trust. (You can see it for free if you click here. )
Imagine my surprise, then, when I received an email from a vet who felt that the Daily Mail article was unfairly critical of vets and that it had defamed an entire profession. He made it clear that vets are in a difficult position with regard to vaccines, and spoke of a need to change vaccine licenses. He pointed out that it is a criminal offence for vets to use a medicine outside of its license. If the license says it should be boosted the next year, vets are taking a risk if they don’t boost the next year. This is despite the science which shows that MLV vaccines are good for years or life.
Ironically, this is exactly why I contacted the journalist in the first place. We (me, 17 vets, and over a hundred CHC members) had written to the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) – the UK government body that licenses veterinary vaccines and drugs - to demand a change to vaccine licenses, and the withdrawal of one-year vaccines. The letter was written because there is no science to support annual vaccination, and each time you vaccinate you risk serious adverse reactions. Put simply, an unnecessary vaccine has the potential to kill your dog.
Unfortunately, for the purposes of the Daily Mail, a group of people sending a letter to the VMD was a non-starter as far as a story goes. It needed more pizzazz for the general public, hence the angle taken. So what should I do? Should I refuse to get involved with national newspaper articles unless they publish the story exactly the way I want them to publish it (which they never will)? Or should I take a broader view, knowing that any airing of the subject would exert pressure upon the VMD to reconsider its licensing policies?
And if the journalist felt it necessary to mention that vets are cashing in on unnecessary boosters to make the story more sexy and meet editorial requirements, should I object? Could I even object?
I mean, are vets cashing in by administering a veterinary product that doesn’t need to be administered? Well, I guess they are – booster income represents a significant proportion of practice income. And are they potentially causing harm to the animals? Well, yes, they are. Should I consider the feelings of vets over and above the wellbeing of the animals? Or should I make an assumption that vets have broad shoulders and need to step up to the plate and be part of the movement towards change … whereas animals, once injected with a vaccine they do not need, have no option but to experience the potential consequences – such as epilepsy, behavioural changes, arthritis, skin problems, cancer, leukaemia, and other auto-immune diseases?
If a whole profession is causing harm, albeit because the ‘law’ says they must, should we be kind to them, try not to upset them, get them to like us, and refrain from standing up for those who cannot speak, and who have no choice? It’s a tough decision for someone, like me, who loves peace and who would never willingly hurt another living being. It’s difficult to know when it’s important and justified to speak the truth, whether or not others want to hear that truth.
Coverage in a veterinary magazine
Thankfully, I was also given the opportunity to speak specifically to vets, in Veterinary Times. Although this was another article reported by a journalist, it was a fair piece. And because Veterinary Times isn’t a mass market publication, it concentrated on the central issue, which is that we were calling for the VMD to withdraw one-year licenses for vaccines. (Veterinary Times article)
I went out of my way to emphasise to the Veterinary Times reporter that I do not hate vets (many of my friends are vets), and she kindly reflected this. I followed up by sending a letter to the editor, making the science known and adding that the VMD is preventing vets from acting ethically by allowing one-year vaccines. I shared this letter with the vet who thought vets were treated unfairly in the Daily Mail.
Unfortunately, the unhappy vet emailed, saying, “an uncharitable person might conclude that you are more concerned with selling books, developing your personal iconography, and creating a sense of anti-vet paranoia than you are with actually achieving your stated aim of changing vaccination policy”.
It’s not unusual for people to write to me to tell me that I’m only writing books and sharing information about canine health for the money. They don’t know that Canine Health Concern is a not-for-profit organisation and that I don’t get paid for the work I do. Neither do they appreciate that it’s very rare for anyone writing books for the dog market to even remotely make a reasonable living out of it. It’s a specialised market with a limited readership. Jackie Collins I am not.
Ironically, this vet’s email came in at the same time as my husband Rob and I were anguishing about how we might find the money to buy a puppy. Many of you shared my grief when I wrote of the passing of Gwinnie and Daniel last year, two of my Golden Retriever friends. Many of you wrote back to me and shared your feelings about your own loved-ones, and your own grief.
She must be mad!
Risking speaking of something else that is not generally accepted within our society, I have been positively torturing myself about how we might manage to bring Gwinnie and Dannie back home. (Yes, I believe that, sometimes, our departed friends will take on a new body and come back to us. I also believe that Gwinnie and Dannie are waiting to come back to us. So here I am stating my truth, knowing that left-brain-dominant people are going to have a field day and decide I’m nuts.) But there you go.
Thousands of years ago, the Yoga Vasishtha stated that the world is an illusion created by the mind. The Talmud said, "We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are."
It’s all an illusion
Human beings are programmed from birth to believe what they believe. Our parents give us our values, reinforced by the schooling system. Society places importance upon left-brain attributes such as maths and science, and ridicules right-brain attributes such as connectedness, wonder and a sense of the Divine. So if someone like me states in public that they believe that the spirit cannot die, and that it can return to the earth plane in a new body, they must be nuts – according to one half of a lump of meat called the brain.
Anyhow, although one part of me had faith and assumed that a way would be found to bring my friends back to me, another part of me (my left brain, no doubt) didn’t believe that we could find the £800 or so that one puppy costs. Also, because Edward isn’t used to being the only dog and he needed a friend, we went looking for a rescue dog. We found a tiny three-year-old boy, a Papillon, who has had a difficult start in life, and we’ll be collecting him from the rescue coordinator next week. His name is Georgie, and if anyone can help Georgie to like men and refrain from biting them, my gentle husband Rob can!
The earth has many angels
People who know us, who are members of Canine Health Concern, generally know that Rob and I aren’t getting rich on the back of the dogs. They know that the opposite is the case. People who don’t know us, however, can be forgiven for thinking that we must be running this organisation in order to get something out of it. Society isn’t used to people doing things because they need doing, rather than for personal gain (although, it has to be said, I’ve met quite a few people in the dog world who work without pay for the sake of the dogs).
Last week, a fellow dog lover gifted me with a book called, “Zero Limits” by Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len. The book shares a Hawaiian spiritual practice that accepts that we are all of us responsible for the reality we see in front of our eyes. (The world as we individually know it is an illusion created by our memories.) Very simply, the practice seeks to heal the problems of the world by taking responsibility for the suffering we see and feel, and forgiving each situation. The basic practice is to say to your Divine self:
I love you.
I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
So, for example, if you – like me – cannot afford to buy a puppy, the practice is that you take responsibility for your feeling of lack, and love and forgive yourself for the drama you have created. You apologise for the beliefs and memories (programming) that created this apparent lack. You ask your Divine self to forgive you. You express gratitude.
And this is what I have been doing.
Yesterday, I received another email, from a CHC member. This lady, Barbara Storey, has, without my knowing, been speaking to other CHC members to tell them that we have heard our puppy, or puppies, calling, but that we don’t have the funds to pay for them. Barbara wrote:
Last Friday I sent out a letter to the CHC members I know and asked if they would like to help by donating to a puppy fund – I also asked that they would send copies of the letter on to any other members they might know. I described it as throwing a pebble into a pool of CHC members hoping the ripples will radiate out to find everyone.
The fact is Catherine there are lots of us who love you and Rob very much and we want to thank you for all you do for us and all the dogs and what better way could there be than to help you have two new babies.
The fund today stands at £705 and it contains lots of cheques. There is I am sure more to come – but as I am going away next week I wanted you to have what has arrived so far and most importantly I want you to start looking for the puppies.
Everyone who has sent a cheque has sent it with love and thanks and they are all wondering why they had not thought of it!
In fact, we received the cheques today before sending this bulletin out, and the total stands at £930!!
Please note that I am categorically not telling you what Barbara has done in order to prompt you to send a cheque! I’m telling you for two other reasons. The first is to give testimony to the power of love and forgiveness. Love is the Creative Principle. Love is what we are made of; it is our connection with the Divine. It is love that built the puppy fund. I can’t tell you how red my nose was, and how the tears were shed; I can’t tell you how full of anticipation I am, and how I look forward to meeting Gwinnie and Dannie again. Yes, there is also some embarrassment, but knowing that the donations were made with love has cancelled out any potential shame.
The second reason I’m telling you about this is to encourage you to buy that book – Zero Limits by Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len – and try the practice in your own life.
Based upon the rationale behind the Hawaiian practice, I can’t help but conclude that – if we all create our own reality – then the reality I created and which has driven me for the past 16 years is in serious need of love, healing and forgiveness.
It requires that I take personal responsibility for the government licensing authorities around the world, the veterinary profession, and the dilemma it faces regarding over-vaccination. I also take personal responsibility for the dogs, cats, and humans whose lives have been ruined by unnecessary and unsafe shots.
I love you.
I am sorry I have projected this pain onto you.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
As for the vet who emailed me, I also take personal responsibility for the many excellent insights he had about the dilemma facing vets, and lovingly project Right Action into his Being. And if he’s still angry with me, I will work to heal my projection of anger with love.
The Torah states that he who heals one person heals the whole world entire. And, as Sophie (a Golden Retriever) told me, we heal the world by loving and being loved.
Simple, yes. But true.
I would like to add one last insight, and this is that the Hawaiian spiritual practice is entirely in keeping with the Christian faith. Christ brought the message of love to the world, and – importantly – the injunction that we must not judge one another. On the cross, as he was being crucified, he said, “Forgive them Father, they know not what they do”. After that important act of forgiveness, Christ was resurrected.
It occurs to me that people of faith around the world are currently waiting for a new earth. Some call it the second coming of Christ; the Hindu religion calls it the Golden Age. Mayan prophesies give us the year 2012.
White Eagle tells us that the life of Christ is a blueprint for all spiritual aspirants (“All these things I do shall ye do and more.”) Could it be that we must find forgiveness for ourselves and each other before the new age can come?
I love you.
I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
The lion shall lie down with the lamb, and little Georgie, our rescue Papillon, will feel so loved that biting will be a thing of the past.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it’s true: that love and forgiveness will create a new world for every human and every animal on the planet?