Parenting & Family Quote by James Herriot

Herriot’s line works because it refuses the comforting fiction that pets (and livestock) are quaint accessories to human life. “Totally dependent” is blunt to the point of accusation: domestication isn’t just companionship, it’s captivity with good PR. By calling animals “helpless, like children,” he’s not being cute; he’s yanking the moral frame away from “ownership” and toward guardianship. Children aren’t optional hobbies. They’re obligations with consequences.

The subtext is a rebuke to a certain rural common sense that treats animals as durable property, resilient by default. Herriot knew the everyday reality behind that attitude: neglected hooves, preventable infections, quiet suffering that hides in barns and backyards until it becomes an emergency. His career as a Yorkshire vet made him a witness to how human convenience, impatience, and penny-pinching can masquerade as tradition. So the sentence is structured like a slow tightening of the screw: dependent, helpless, children, trust. Each word removes another excuse.

“A trust that is put upon us” is the key rhetorical move. It sounds almost legal, like an estate responsibility you didn’t ask for but still must honor. That phrasing also dodges sentimentality: Herriot isn’t begging for kindness; he’s asserting duty. The intent is practical as much as ethical - to make readers feel the weight of the leash, the stall door, the food bowl. If we control every variable of an animal’s life, we inherit the consequences of every failure.