Quotes by Veterinarians

Sex is a relatively recent addition to the dance of life. For more than 2 000 000 000 years asexual reproduction was the rule. You know if you were a creature you just separated into two clones.
Mark Jerome Walters
Two-parent sex appeared on the scene about 500 000 000 years ago.
Mark Jerome Walters
Over the years I've come to appreciate how animals enter our lives prepared to teach and far from being burdened by an inability to speak they have many different ways to communicate. It is up to us to listen more than hear, to look into more than past.
Nick Trout
He was massive, a veritable Arnold Schwarzenegger of a cat, with a wide, handsome face and a proud, lionish expression.
Nicholas Dodman
What would you do if your cat suddenly went psycho and started to attack you for no apparent reason, lying in wait and pouncing or stalking you with a faraway look reminiscent of its predatory cousins and ancestors?
Nicholas Dodman
Cats may walk by themselves, but there are times when they need our support.
Nicholas Dodman
It is a curious truth that many cats enjoy warmer, more convivial, even affectionate relationships with humans than they could ever do with fellow felines.
Bruce Fogle
Sometimes the truth stares us in the face, but we just choose not to look.
Gill Lewis
My mind went back to that picture in the obstetrics book. A cow standing in the middle of a gleaming floor while a sleek veterinary surgeon in a spotless parturition overall inserted his arm to a polite distance. He was relaxed and smiling, the farmer and his helpers were smiling, even the cow was smiling. There was no dirt or blood or sweat anywhere.That man in the picture had just finished an excellent lunch and had moved next door to do a bit of calving just for the sheer pleasure of it, as a kind of dessert. He hadn't crawled shivering from his bed at two o'clock in the morning and bumped over twelve miles of frozen snow, staring sleepily ahead till the lonely farm showed in the headlights. He hadn't climbed half a mile of white fell-side to the doorless barn where his patient lay.
James Herriot
I believe the happiness we feel in relation to animals is immensely significant. I believe it is absolutely central to our physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being.
Linda Bender
I believe we have this idea that bad things ought to be prevented from happening.
Linda Bender
I take it hard when an animal in my care suffers or dies. I take it even harder when the animal's suffering is the result of human exploitation or carelessness.
Linda Bender
Great teachers often come to us in humble packaging. That little dog held the wisdom of a sage in his heart. I learned from him that healing is not about the success or failure of the physical body, that physical survival is secondary. All creatures wish to live and thrive, but bodies do wear out. The number of days we walk the earth (or fly or swim or crawl on it) is not the point. Animals live in the present moment. If kindness, caring, and respect fill that moment, life is fill, no matter what came before or what might come in the future. A soul that feels loved is joyous and healed.
Linda Bender
It is commonplace, and true, to point out that animals are happier than people because they live entirely in the present.
Linda Bender
Animals suffer both emotionally and physically, but they don't suffer metaphysically. That is, they don't suffer about suffering, don't get thrown into spiritual confusion by it, or fall out of connection with the divine because of it.
Linda Bender
Because we tend to equate intelligence with language--particularly the ability to use language to think and communicate abstractions--it is natural to conclude that animals are, on the whole, a lot less intelligent than we are.
Linda Bender
Animals don't know exactly what will happen when they die any more than we do. In the absence of specific knowledge, they simply trust. They trust death the way they trust life: as participation in the Source. What will happen when they die must be okay because what is happening now is okay.
Linda Bender
The belief that every living thing has an individual soul is called animism. (Anima, which means 'soul,' is also the root of the word 'animal.') Anthropologists have found this belief to be universal in children, though the children themselves don't think of it as a belief. It is, to them, one of the most obvious features of the world around them, and the most obvious way of interpreting what goes on in that world.
Linda Bender
It is my understanding from an intuitive relationship with animals that it is complete folly to try to figure out what is right or wrong for humans by observing what other animals are doing. Observe any animal and you will quickly figure out that a hawk does not try to hunt like an eagle. The wolf does not try to be a lion.
Linda Bender
To be sure, there are human abilities that other animals lack, but the more we learn about animals, the more abilities we discover that humans lack. Obviously, if animals were included in the Olympics, humans wouldn’t take home any gold medals. We can’t run as fast as a cheetah, swim as well as a fish, or lift as much weight as an elephant.
Linda Bender
Every species embodies a solution to some environmental challenge, and some of these solutions are breathtaking in their elegance.
Linda Bender
Animals remind us that all beings who walk, stand, swim, crawl, or fly are radiant, mysterious, and unique expressions of the Source. Every species, every culture, has it’s own genius.
Linda Bender
We all came into this world wired to connect with all life.
Linda Bender
Many people who live with animals have noticed that their cat or dog becomes solicitous of them when they are feeling unwell. A cat who is normally aloof may come sit in the sick person's lap; a normally rambunctious dog may tone himself down when his human friend isn't up to romping or running. In some cases, the ability of animals to sense illness in a human has been lifesaving.
Linda Bender
Has it ever struck you as odd that humans are the only creatures on the planet who wear clothes? Everything else, from aardvarks to zebras, is running around in its birthday suit, blissfully unclear of the concept of underpants. Why don't people do the same?
Linda Bender
Everybody is born so that they can learn to live a good life-like loving everybody and being nice, right? Well animals already know how to do that, so they don't have to live so long
Robin Downing
When there is a grand cause to be won, he said, sometimes, there are unavoidable casualties. None of us are happy about that, but it’s a painful reality. He paused and added, We’ve all accepted our culpability…
Leslie Ann Moore
The last remnants of Deanna the child--the idealist, the sheltered elite--had been torn loose by tonight's tragedies, slain with the same bullet that had felled her would-be killer. She had no idea who the new person inhabiting this shell of her old self would become. The realization frightened her.
Leslie Ann Moore
Do you want to die, or do you want to die trying? Give up or give it a shot.
Nick Trout
When you have succeeded in letting go of a trivial preoccupation or two, your awareness will begin to expand into the deeper sources of stress in your life, the bigger uncontrollable things that you have been at pains to control.
Linda Bender
Understanding your dog and knowing how to control him, develop his potentials, and resolve behavior problems, emotional conflicts and frustrations are no less essential than love and respect.
Michael W. Fox
...hoping that he might peek through a gap in the fance and see that Patch was really a big softy, all bark and no bite, or, as they sometimes say in England, "All mouth and no trousers"!
Nick Trout
The inner encounters I have with animals—and will be teaching you to have— are exchanges of meaning.
Linda Bender
The animals feel that this urgency is mutual. Their own suffering has made them aware of human suffering. More frequent contact with us has sensitized them to what troubles us. They feel our anxiety and our confusion and, most of all, our loneliness. The pain of being disconnected from the Earth, from each other, from our fellow creatures, and from the Source of all life is the worst pain they can imagine, and they are concerned about us. They understand even better than we do that the suffering we inflict on them is an expression of our own suffering, and that their physical situation cannot get better unless the human spiritual condition gets better. They want to help.
Linda Bender
Grieving the loss of a loved one—whether human or animal—is not only permissible, it is essential.
Linda Bender
Sometimes nature can take its course and shove it. Our commitment to protecting our cat or dog is life-long and sadly, sometimes, that includes protection from discomfort and pain, even if, in the vet's opinion, this means euthanasia.
Nick Trout
It may be a cat, a bird, a ferret, or a guinea pig, but the chances are high that when someone close to you dies, a pet will be there to pick up the slack. Pets devour the loneliness. They give us purpose, responsibility, a reason for getting up in the morning, and a reason to look to the future. They ground us, help us escape the grief, make us laugh, and take full advantage of our weakness by exploiting our furniture, our beds, and our refrigerator. We wouldn't have it any other way. Pets are our seat belts on the emotional roller coaster of life--they can be trusted, they keep us safe, and they sure do smooth out the ride.
Nick Trout
Animals in children’s literature always have a soul life because children perceive animals as having souls.
Linda Bender
Cultivate an intellectual habit of subordinating one's opinions and wishes to objective evidence and a reverence for things as they really are.
William Ian Beardmore Beveridge
Most of us are used to thinking that “imaginary” is the opposite of “real.” That is, when we imagine things, we are just making them up. In the spiritual life, though, there are some realities that cannot manifest unless we begin by imagining them.
Linda Bender
Without fail, he always signed off on these letters with love and he always included Whiskey and Bess in the list of individuals sending this love my way. At the time it made me laugh, it made me embarrassed, but as soon as I softened, as soon as I matured back into his son, I came to appreciate what he was saying -- an endearing and magnanimous reminder of how family will always be the sum of its individual members, be they human or animal.
Nick Trout
There are many reasons why so many of us choose to share our lives with a pet--it's the perfect antidote for loneliness, providing an endless supply of smiles and the certainty of unwavering companionship, and many of us have seen the way a pet can make a family feel whole.
Nick Trout
And the peace which I always found in the silence and emptiness of the moors filled me utterly
James Herriot
The Imagination merely enables us to wander into the darkness of the unknown where, by the dim light of the knowledge we carry, we may glimpse something that seems of interest. But when we bring it out and examine it more closely it usually proves to be only trash whose glitter had caught our attention. Imagination is at once the source of all hope and inspiration but also of frustration. To forget this is to court despair.
William Ian Beardmore Beveridge
We didn't, after all, sing "Another One Bites The Dust" as the coffin was carried out; Hazel and the vicar had settled instead on the more traditional "How Great Thou Art". And Aunty Rose's old adversary the mayor was pressed into service as a coffin bearer to replace Matt.Rose Adele Thornton, born in Bath, England, died in Waimanu, New Zealand, a mere fifty-three years later. Adept and compassionate nurse, fervent advocate of animal welfare, champion of correct diction and tireless crusader against the misuse of apostrophes. Experimental chef, peerless aunt, brave sufferer and true friend. She had the grace and courage to thoroughly enjoy a life which denied her everything she most wanted. The bravest woman I ever knew.
Danielle Hawkins
If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.
James Herriot