Animal Sciences

Pauleen Bennett
Adjunct Faculty
I know many successful people who have had their lives planned out from a very young age. I am definitely not one of those people. My life so far has consisted of many unpredictable twists and turns and none of it made much sense until just a few years ago.

For my first ten years I was part of an ordinary middle class Australian family, living in a suburban house with my parents, sisters and brother. At this time my father, originally a butcher, saw an opportunity to make money from growing chickens. We moved to a small farm and suddenly became responsible for over 50,000 chicks. What a lifestyle change!

Horse riding quickly became an all-consuming hobby. Every spare moment was taken up with horses and, during my teenage years, I competed successfully in shows and gymkhanas. When I wasn’t riding I was caring for our other household pets - dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, guinea pigs, goats and, at one stage, a dairy cow. I did well at school but couldn’t decide what I wanted to be so, when I finished my exams, I took up riding professionally, training show jumpers and race horses and teaching riding skills to young children. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that it suddenly occurred to me that galloping around a race track at 4 AM in the morning was not something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I enrolled at a university hoping that a career would magically appear. Surprisingly, it didn’t so I enrolled in two separate degrees concurrently and studied psychology, sociology, philosophy, biology, physiology, genetic science and even, would you believe it, computer programming. By the end of my fourth year I knew I was most interested in the behavioral sciences, so I began a PhD in behavioral neuroscience, using animals to study brain chemicals involved in memory formation. A year later I decided I needed clinical training as well, so I also enrolled part-time in a Master’s degree. By the time I’d completed both graduate courses I was exhausted, but qualified to work either as a clinical neuropsychologist or as a research scientist. I was offered a terrific position at one of Australia’s leading universities, designing and teaching psychology courses. I thought I’d found my career at last.

But wait! All the time I was studying I had to live apart from most of my animals and could visit my horses only on weekends. Only my pet dogs kept me sane (dog owners will completely understand this sentence). I therefore decided to take up dog breeding and training as a hobby, completed two certificate courses in dog training in my spare time and, before you know it, had accumulated four Australian Shepherds (one pregnant). When the eight puppies arrived it was far more than I and my partner could manage in the little suburban house we were renovating. Clearly time for a move back to the country, where we now live with our extended family: sixty alpacas, fifty angora goats, a handful of horses, a bunch of dogs and a cat. Heaven!

Amazingly, it was totally by accident that I became involved in teaching other people about human-animal relationships. Living with my animals, training other people to manage horses and dogs, and working with animals as a research scientist I was well aware of how confusing our relationships with animals can be. So when an opportunity came up to join the Animal Welfare Science Center and develop Australia’s first graduate course in animal welfare I jumped at it, hoping to sort out my own thoughts along the way. I don’t think I’ve accomplished this yet, and possibly never will, but I’ve now spent several years deeply immersed in thinking and reading and talking about animal issues, which I believe are amongst the most challenging and important issues confronting modern society. I’ve also worked with an incredible bunch of graduate students and colleagues, investigating different aspects of the relationships people have with companion animals, and I’ve seen first hand how important animals are in all aspects of our lives.

So finally, maybe all those twists and turns in my life make sense after all. I’ve loved animals, I’ve despised animals, I’ve eaten them and worn them, used them for research, trained them for sport, been badly injured by them, nursed sick ones back to health, bought them, sold them, watched them, feared them, grieved for them and, most of all, learned from them. I am convinced, absolutely, that we need animals in our lives. I’m also convinced that they need us to take better care of them than is currently the case. Animals are so much a part of everything we do that I can’t think of a better, more rewarding topic to teach and research. It’s an amazing time to be alive, with so much at stake and so many opportunities to influence the future of our planet in a positive way.

It was ever so exciting to learn that Dr. Jim Kinder from The Ohio State University shared my vision for teaching students about Animals in Society and I was deeply honored to be asked to contribute to this course. I’m very much looking forward to developing my own ideas further through engagement with such a forward thinking institution and with students that will someday lead their communities. My only regret is that it means being separated from my animal friends in Australia for some of the year. It’s such a pity dogs can’t use email - yet!
Bennett

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