This is a PodTalk independent production created in conjunction with the Meta and Walkley Foundation Public Interest Journalism Fund. Before we get started, this podcast includes conversations about suicide, mental health and drug use. Please take care when listening.
You may have heard the line Love Your Pet, Love Your Vet. But you may not know that it's a registered charity that's focused on supporting the mental health of veterinarians.
Many of us consider our pets to be members of our families and our vets are their primary caregivers.
Psychologist Dr. Nadine Hamilton has been guests on podcasts like this one. She's appeared in the news. And she's written papers and books after years of researching veterinary well being
in 2018. Dr. Nadine Hamilton created the campaign love your pet, love your vet. It's also important we encourage veterinarians to flourish and love themselves. So if our vets are looking after our beloved pets, who's looking after them,
Love your pet, love your vet is about raising awareness and building support in the community to address the high suicide rate in the industry.
We are not you know, it cost nothing to say thank you. It costs nothing to be kind. You know, we don't always have to show kindness with cards and chocolates and flowers. I mean, absolutely. They're lovely. And that is a gesture. But I'd say don't underestimate the importance of just saying a genuine thank you and what a difference that that can make because we have to remember that every day that you know we're bringing our pet home is a day we're not having to say goodbye to them.
Dr Hamilton's campaign is probably one of the best known in Australia. But she's starting to share that space with a growing band of people who like her aren't vets who are trying to do their bit to bring about some kind of change however they can.
I'm Caroline Winter, a journalist and dog lover and you're listening to Sick As A Dog, Episode Seven, Outside Looking In. This podcast is shining a light on a crisis that's making the people who care for our animals very sick. It's burning them out, forcing many too late their jobs. And in some cases, it's killing them. This series is about finding answers to some very complex questions that affect us all and can't be ignored any longer.
The day started with shooting rain, but it's turned to near perfect at Sydney Olympic Park in Sydney's West.
Weirdly, or someone beautifully or appropriately. The sun always shines if things walk so it's a good omen. It was
Jack Levitt isn't a vet. He's a guy who lost a mate.
Thanks for coming and I know that people are connected in but I'm Jack and I started the walk in memory played Hargraves Dr. Flynn Hargreaves, who, sadly, we lost in 2018. And since then we've been just getting together to have a chat.
There have been Flynn's Walks in Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane. And this one is the first time in Sydney.
And what's happened over the last couple of years is we've got together to sort of remember when and grieve and have a memorial but it's become a legacy now and I know he'd be proud and he'd be proud of us as being friends and family. But be proud that the industry is saying, Hey, we're gonna do something about this talk and walk so
Over the next four kilometres, Flynn's friends and family, vets and vet students, pet owners and people in the community will walk and talk about the vet crisis and what can be done to change things.
I'm Pete Hargreaves Flynn's dad, and we're tagging along behind Jack Levitt and Jeremy, a lot of his High School and veterinary friends who, in memory of Flynn decided to start Flynn's Walk.
Peter and Jackie lost their son to suicide when he was living and working as a locum vet in London in 2018.
Oh, he was one of those people, he didn't lose friends he he just added to them. He was one of those blokes that everybody gets on with. He was a person that just had as many friends as anyone and popular fun guy, didn't take things. too serious was happy, having 40 beers with his friends as he was running a marathon on which he did regularly. Yeah, just one of those guys.
Dr. Flynn Hargreaves was 27 when he took his life, it was something no one saw coming.
Now he's highly intelligent. And, you know, you wonder more intelligent people are, the more better, are they concealing issues they might be having. Or he said to me once he said, this, the only time he ever said anything, he said, You know, I get a bit down sometimes that, and this was as an adult, and I said, Oh, God, don't worry about that, you know, if you don't get get a bit down on the world, at times, you know, you're probably not paying attention, you know, that would have been talking about, you know, maybe a bit of politics or international affairs or something like that, you know, but clearly, he was a person that took a lot more to heart, then he left on, you know, academically, and nobody saw that he was suffering and, you know, most likely as a result of stresses in the veterinary industry that we can all work out, you know, they're real, and they're out there. So we'll get a bit of bit of a message out where we can.
Listening to Pete talk, I'm reminded of Kate and Gary Putland, and how hard it must be to understand why, why their children were driven to this point. And coming to terms with that, if you ever can.
Well, the two prime things I've now been educated into understanding is that the stress levels of not being able to save someone's pet who can't afford to have a pet saved. And then not only the pressures on yourself, re that the pressures that the pet owners can then put back on to the vet professionals. Because they can't afford to pay to have the pet save. There's that that just accumulates a feeling of less self worth, you know that you can't save everyone on why can't I do this? This is what I'm trying to do you know, when saved a couple of pets on his own money, but as his boss then outed the Dandenong clinic said clean if you if we tried to save every animal that came in here, that people couldn't afford to pay us for, there wouldn't be a clinic here.
That's something I've been told by many vets that inability to save pets, especially when finances are at play. It's also been suggested to me that the continual euthanizing of sick or injured animals takes its toll. And there are also concerns that while very much a part of events day to day that euthanasia is normalised as a means of treatment, and questions have been raised around whether the profession sees it as a normalised way to deal with suffering more broadly.
Before we continue, I just want to give you another warning before Pete goes on to talk about the second reason that he believes vets like his son are able to do what he did.
The other important thing is that most of his vet friends believe needs to be changed is other medical professionals. They don't have the sole key to the cabinet where all the goodies are kept.
And paid Hargreaves is talking about the drugs that vets use to treat and euthanise animals.
When you can just go to the cabinet and take out the means to suicide painlessly. As they're aware, you know, what's too easy, perhaps they should be dual keys to the cabinet, then better record keeping of what drugs are in the safe and when and what they're taken out for.
The access to drugs is something most people I spoke to didn't necessarily shy away from, but they also didn't really want to be drawn on it either. It's obviously important because medicating a nice the tising and euthanizing animals is just part of the day to day when you're a vet or a vet nurse, but it has a dark side
There's been fierce debate about the access to veterinary drugs, particularly pentobarbital injection. It's what fits us to put animals to sleep. And that's something they can do multiple times, sometimes every day. pentobarbital injection is also known as the common method of vet suicide, which has been the subject of coronial inquests in South Australia, and in Queensland. A recent review of the national scheduling of pentobarbital injection by the Therapeutic Goods Administration proposed it'd be up sheduled from sheduled four which is a prescription only medicine to shedule eight a contract All drug. But the TGA decided it should stay at shedule four, and that I quote, suitable controls on the storage and access to pentobarbital injection could be achieved by requiring pentobarbital injection to be stored in a locked container to prevent unauthorised access. In its submission to the TGA review, the Australian Veterinary Association was in support of regulation around locking the drug away, but not the added requirement to record each use in a register of drugs of addiction. The ABA doesn't believe up scheduling the drug would significantly reduce a vets access to the drug or make any substantial impact on the high suicide rates in the profession. It says it's focused on addressing the risk factors which lead to suicide.
It's always interesting in this moment, you can look at the stuff around what's happening, like in a functional sense, and you like the barbecue going, okay, is the coffee line short. But you step back and realise people are here, and then engage with like our mission and our message. And so, the short answer is, it's a success because people come they get around it, they're engaged. They're listening, and they go around and tell people what they did on the weekend.
That's Jack Levitt again. He and Flynn Hargreaves met at school, and they were friends from when they were about 15.
It was just like a vibrant person who was a vet. But it was more than that. He's he was my mate, and he loved footy, any love live music. They love banter and he loved astronomy. He loved all different things because he wasn't interested. Personally say there's a saying something like, if you want to be interesting, be interested, and I think that was him.
Losing Flynn was hard on Jack as it was on all of Flynn's friends and family. And in the blur of that time and trying to make sense of it all. Jack started Flynn's walk as a memorial to his friend.
Yeah, well, in four and a half years, we've gone from a memorial event to a legacy event. We've now unfortunately in major cities. So we started in Melbourne in Melbourne to the home. But we've grown it out to Canberra grown it out to Brisbane, and Sydney. So now in four cities, and there's been some other small sort of grassroots ones as well. But yeah, just it's growing beyond anything I ever imagined or envisioned. It's just insane. Yeah.
What Jack has created is a movement that brings together the community that encourages conversations, and that spreads awareness of the mental health challenges faced by vets and vet staff. But it's part of a grassroots kind of activism from those outside the vet industry, who were saying enough is enough.
What we've done with things walkers, given the openness and the opportunity and the platform for people to get together and talk about that, because at first we were actually just trying to get the pet owners together to tell them to be nice to their vet, which is still a really pivotal part. But it's evolving now that the veterinary community and particularly in our interstate walks, it's more so actually the vet community coming and going. Finally a chance to talk about this. We put a literal flag in the ground that has Flynn's Walk waving. But for them, it's a metaphorical flag that they've needed for a long time. And we've done that from outside the veterinary community just to say, we care, you should care about yourselves to look after yourselves. And there's a way through and there's support.
As hundreds gathered in Sydney for Flynn's walk on one side of the country, in Adelaide, another event was happening. This one was for Sophie partland. In the crowd of 1000s of runners and walkers for the annual city today, I'm looking for a group of young women in their 30s I spot them stretching ahead of the 12k run all wearing matching T shirts.
At Sophie's funeral, her coffin was a beautiful white coffin with some flowers all over it, and a batch of sunflowers laid over her coffin. And that has now become something very meaningful to us girls. Whenever we see some flowers, we always reach out whenever we're talking about Sophie, we put a little sunflower emoji. So yes, we've got a sunflower on the front of our T shirts. And then on the back we've got a picture of Sophie with her two dogs, and we've named ourselves Sophie's crew.
That's Hannah Reintals. She met Sophie and year five and she remembers her as a caring friendly girl, someone you wanted to be around.
Always up for a laugh. And I don't know she was always just such a good friend. We're always checking in. Always reaching out, making sure everyone's doing well and always up for a good time. Up for a dance and a drink.
They stayed in touch from afar when Sophie moved to Melbourne for work. And Hannah knew something wasn't right. She just didn't know how bad things were.
The week before she passed away, she had messaged me and said that she wanted to come home. I said to her, it was just a text message. But I said to her, please come home. She said that she wasn't happy. And I said, you know, you said her life's too short to be unhappy. And we would all want her back in Adelaide. I remember Sophie saying that she was earning good money over there. But it just wasn't a life that she wanted to live. The hours were hard. I don't think we ever really knew how hard it was for Sophie, she would say that. It wasn't something that she could sustain long term, which is why she had started studying something else. But I just don't think we ever really knew how hard it was for her.
What was the feeling like for you when when you found out?
You was devastated. You know, it's one of those things. You have people in your life that you just think you're gonna be there for forever and not have. It's really, it's where you will really miss her thought that she would have forever been alive. And it's really sad that she's gone. Which is why we do we want to do something like this. We don't ever want to forget her. And we always want her to be around us. Yeah, so that's why we're doing something like this today.
As a nod to Sophie, who was very much into her fitness this the first Sophie's crew has started it's an annual tradition, raising money and awareness for their friend.
Sophie was really into her fitness and I guess we just passed her one year anniversary of her not being with us. So we really wanted to do something to honour her and what better way to run and then having champers afterwards for her.
She'd be running with you today.
Yes, and she would kick our arses!
The runners get going and I join Sophie's Mum and some of the Putland's friends in a 6k walk. Kate, Garry and their sons Tom and Ollie have just spent a few days in Sydney together. It was a family getaway that fell on one of the hardest anniversaries a year since Sophie's death, which also happened to be Father's Day.
How was the Sunday?
Look, It wasn't too bad. Garry was the first half of the day he was finding it difficult. But the boys are really good in making light of things and making things jokes and you know, we just we just made a really big effort to make sure it was not more of a than it was it was just amazing.
How have you been since?
Actually really flat. Yeah, really flat. So much has happened in 12 months.
The thing about suicide is it leaves far more questions than it delivers answers. And so for the friends, families and the colleagues of Sophie partland and Flin Hargreaves and the many others touched by the loss of someone in this way. They keep asking those questions and try to find those answers however they can.
Well, hello and welcome back to Flynn's Talk the podcast where we are exploring all kinds of things to do with the veterinary field veterinary well being in the mental health space. I'm Jack and Jez my co host is with me, Jez...
Jack Levitt and Jeremy Gelman started the podcast Flynn's talk in early 2020.
There's a lot of that the clinic absorbing that back onto itself. And we mentioned that's not sustainable but can you kind of just like take us into why that's not sustainable because something we hear about is that pet care animal care is expensive. We don't
As they brand it. Flynn's Talk is about keeping the conversation going around well being in the veterinary industry and mental health more broadly.
We've had conversations through these podcasts around, but how do we actually make the industry more sustainable? How do we make it better for the people coming into it? How do we stop people leaving it? So we've done over 30 episodes of Flynn's Talk and spoken with all different people. That's nurses practice managers. The president of the AVA, and the message is the same that they all have a story of someone they've lost and they know the burnout, and they know the struggle and they know the issues.
And Flynn's Talk is about sharing those perspectives, The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly.
So we're hearing the same message from the right people, right down to the person that is a cat is a cattery attendant, and Australia's top pet. They're all saying we know. So we know the love and joy that pets bring to our families and our lives. And not just that this support animals helping people to live their daily lives, you know, bomb detection, dogs helping keep Australia safe, all that stuff. So all of that doesn't function and can't function with healthy animals unless we have healthy vets. And so that's kind of the other way we're trying to show where vets have touch points, the touch points everywhere. We're gonna sell switches on today, beef sausages, that's control, biosecurity, and diseases coming across our borders. They're part of that. So we have safe and healthy food, thanks to vets and veterinary medicine. And that I think when you zoom out and you're like, wow, vets are like part of the backbone of any community at a very high level, but also they'll keep fluffy safe when you need fluffy looked after the vet.
Jack says he is seeing change from the industry from individual practices. And also from pet owners like you and me.
It can feel tokenistic or a bit of a cliche, but you know, that clinics are holding R U OK day morning teas. And they weren't before. Veterinary practices are having mental health champions now, they're formalising that into Mental Health First Aid certificates and things like that. They're putting in practices in some clinics now where they're debriefing after high intensity days. Yeah, so there's sort of some of the practical things that are happening. There's other things like they're bringing in resilience training. But all of this stuff tends to happen. When an issue was identified, what we want to do is drag that stuff forward and be getting new students coming into the field, sort of shifting, shifting the stigma as well around speaking up. So yeah, there's stuff happening. And there's amazing innovation and thought around so many things, but the veterinary field in many other ways, as well as been around a long time and is fairly conservative. So it's getting there. Days like today, and days like we put on around Australia, and have been doing for a couple of years mean, people just talking about them. The people, there's people behind the animal, that's what like I just stress to people I talked to, like, just be kind.
Like the Putland's, Jack Levitt is focused on bringing down the suicide rate. And he's also about celebrating vets like Flynn and Sophie.
We're walking because the veterinary community wants to celebrate their resilience and their the respect that they get from people. So we can't keep walking to lower the suicide rate forever. But in time, I hope that that could turn and we walk because we've created resilience we've created like veterinary care is sustainable for the people. My message to take to the people listening, you know that the veterinary community listening and hopefully people without outside of that, like, just pause for that moment and think about where does it sit in the community, explore, increase your knowledge around what they contribute to the community, be patient, be understanding and be kind, kindness is free. You don't even have to queue up for it (laughs).
Next time on the final episode of sick as a dog, Sophie's legacy,
I actually feel Sophie closer to me doing this. I know that sounds really weird, but I do. I can't believe we're doing it. But we're doing it.
I think she would have been very supportive of what we're doing because she was doing that herself.
As the Putland's prepared to unveil their national campaign to all of Australia. What solutions are vets considering in house? And what else are they asking from governments, that community and you and me
It's very complex, and the solutions will be equally as complex and so I started looking into it and I genuinely think we can fix this I genuinely think that there is hope.
Sick As A Dog is written, produced, edited and presented by me Caroline Winter for PodTalk on the lands of the Kaurna people and additional support from Drew Radford. You can support this podcast by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts, share it with others or post about it on social media. And you can find out more online at sickasadogpodcast.com.au
