By: Valerie Milano
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 8/17/2024 – When Australian filmmaker Danielle Baynes set out to write the script for her latest short, “The Dog,” which follows a veterinarian in a 24-hour clinic across the arc of a long night, she wanted to take a look at how animals handle loss and grief.
Her own experience with losing a beloved pet had sparked that idea, so Baynes decided she wanted to use a vet clinic as the setting for her story. What she discovered was that the veterinary profession has a dark secret.
Suicide rates among veterinarians are quite high as they are more likely to die by suicide than the general population. Experts point to occupational stressors like burnout and compassion fatigue, as well as access to euthanasia drugs, as the culprits, especially in clinics.
So, what started out as a poignant look at beloved pets and their owners dealing with the end of life, turned into a look at the profession itself and those stressors that bring these noble healers to want to end their own lives.
“The Dog” brings that awful truth to light in a very poignant fashion. As the overnight vet (Kate Walsh from “Gray’s Anatomy”) at a 24-hour clinic works the graveyard shift, she experiences the gamut of emotions, ranging from joy in treating a minor situation to the incumbent sadness owners feel as she euthanizes their beloved companions.
“I knew that the vets were there as an anchor in that emotional storm, but I wasn’t aware of what they were going through,” Baynes said during an exclusive interview with The Hollywood Times, as her film was screening at the HollyShorts film festival. That revelation caused her to change gears and refocus on making a film that examined the vets instead of the animals.
Click below for our exclusive interview:
“I knew that was the actual story,” she said. “I wanted to shift the camera to their experience so I could create more awareness around this issue. It resonated with me as my parents are in the medical profession in human health care, and they had experience with burnout and depression throughout their careers.”
Baynes said she had “an awareness” of how it had affected her parents, but in talking with veterinarians as she researched her story, she found the statistics and factors were quite specific to the veterinary profession.
“We interface with our vets every day. A pet in America receives emergency care every 2.5 seconds,” she said. “(Vets) are such important people in our lives, so one of the big drivers was to create more awareness about this issue.”
The performance by Walsh in “The Dog” imbues this short with power and hopes to bring the audience to a point of realization that being a vet is not all about handing out doggy treats and petting furry kittens. Walsh’s facial expressions tell so much of the story of this beleaguered animal doctor as she performs her duties in a rather dark and gloomy office.
Baynes said landing Walsh for the role was “a bit of luck.” Walsh had just relocated to Australia at the time Baynes was casting and developing her story.
“I have been a big fan of her work for a long time,” she said. “And when a Hollywood celebrity comes to Australia, it makes the news. So, I took a chance and got the script to her with a real vision of seeing her in this part … She is so charismatic on screen, and really allows the audience into whatever emotion she is playing.”
And the role of the veterinarian in this film truly relies on that skill as the script is noticeably light on dialogue requiring Walsh to reveal her internal emotional pain wordlessly at times. “The Dog” is most assuredly a film with a deep emotional undercurrent that I feel makes it well worth seeing.
Baynes wrote and directed the film, as well as co-producing it with Lottie Aspinal and Morgan Hiind. Cinematographer Stefan Duscio brilliantly captured the stark scene in the clinic, and film editor Shannon Michaelas assembled the work into a brilliant look at a rarely seen facet of the veterinary profession.
For more about “The Dog” check out the film’s website.
