Page 5 - Spring 23

headquarters. I remember him arriving at the first march wearing a T-shirt over his shirt and tie that read ‘Homeopaths do it Naturally’ and when we were invited in to talk to the president of the RCVS, he sat with his jacket open clearly enjoying the discomfort he was causing. He was never afraid of being different or of standing up for his views and had a keen sense of justice and injustice. I remember being astounded at the energy he showed in the campaign, often working late in the evening writing letters or making suggestions to improve mine; he was of course a master of correct grammar and punctuation and I often received my letters back with corrections.
I must admit to being slightly in awe of Chris when I became JVP but he treated me as an equal, listening to my ideas or suggestions with respect and an open mind. I can see how clients must have loved him so much as he was always open to new ideas and better ways of treating animals. I remember asking him how he managed clients who often had very alternative beliefs, he replied he always listened and nodded because he might learn something from them, however unusual their suggestions and I remember him saying ‘we don’t know the half of it yet’
At this time, as we are all reeling from the shock of his death, the world does seem a lesser place without him, the gap left by his absence almost too much to contemplate but the dreadful sense of loss is tempered by the knowledge that he will continue to guide us in the legacy he left with his work and his teaching and he will always be a presence in our lives. It would give him the greatest of pleasures to see homeopathy grow and flourish, so go on we must by taking courage from his example and continue spreading the word as he did throughout his life.
Our thoughts are with Shelagh his wife and all his family.
Ilse
Guest Editorial by Chris Day –
AWhaleofaTime Fromthearchives•Autumn2007mag
Chris’s death has prompted us to look back through the archives of the mag – remembering some of his contributions over the years in various roles. We share a couple of them here (plus a couple of others) as a reminder of his homeopathic veterinary skills as well as his humour.
From the Archives
I am honoured to be asked to write a (smaller) piece for the Magazine.
Malene does a wonderful shepherding job and has been endlessly patient and persistent with me. I have ‘suffered’ a magnificent holiday, in a place that was never on my agenda – Costa del Sol.
I never wanted to go there but life’s forces work in mysterious ways. I decided to make the best of it and take in some history in Gibraltar and take [my wife] Carina to see Cape Trafalgar, as she had done so much work on Nelson and Trafalgar, in 2005, the bicentenary.
At Tarifa, one can take a boat to go whale-watching. The sea was deep blue, the weather good but there was a choppy surface, after the previous day’s high winds. The very powerful boat slapped and banged its way out to sea, with poor Carina petrified and taken over by fear and insecurity and dowsed in spray, to make matters worse. Then we saw the dolphins. The change was instant, as only energetic phenomena can be. She became all smiles, all chatter, revelled in the boat’s hectic plunges towards the next ‘pod’ and had, literally, a whale of a time. She never gave the sea or fear another thought. We were blessed. We saw a great number of three species of dolphin but had missed the whales. I can only describe the experience as a revelation. Here
was energy medicine in the wild. One hears tales of dolphin-power and who can deny it.
We went to Gibraltar two days later, to catch up on history. We chanced upon an unsung cemetery, where some ailing survivors of Trafalgar, who were taken to hospital in Gibralter, subsequently perished and were laid to rest. This was an unexpected bonus to our history trail. We went up the Rock, of course, and saw the so-called Barbary Apes (in fact monkeys). Here I had as neat a field demonstration of a simple truism as I could imagine possible. Our first encounter with the ‘Apes’ was near the tourist shop. They were frankly obese, sluggish and badtempered.
If this was representative of the species, one could be forgiven for thinking of species-specific constitutional types. However, up on the rock proper, with abundant fruit fed to them by the authorities, were active, lissom, agile, bonny examples, as much a delight to see as any of nature’s creatures. They had humour and a delightful verve and lightness about them, as only freedom and a natural diet can provide.
The RSPCA is now concerned about obesity in pets. The profession is onto it like a shot, with obesity clinics and assured publicity, particularly in view of the high- lighted human condition, now very much in the news.
3
continued on p4