Without a hint of irony, I can say that this is going to be a good Christmas for Harvey the labrador. Harvey made history last week when he became the first canine in the UK to be successfully operated on for an irregular heart beat – the same operation that Tony Blair underwent in 2004.

Veterinary surgeons from the Royal (Dick) veterinary school in Edinburgh inserted catheters into his heart and removed the excess muscle that was causing his heart to beat three times faster than it should.

The operation cost his owners £3,000, which one assumes does not include the cost of the get well cards, the extra-soft dog bed and the postoperative treats to restore Harvey’s appetite.

We are, you see, supposed to celebrate Harvey’s good news. It is progress. Heart surgery to save the life of a dog is now universally regarded as A Good Thing, and we should all feel a warm glow inside because, thanks to Harvey’s bravery and the vet’s skills, lots of other lucky dogs with arrhythmic hearts will be cured in the future.

Heart surgery, therefore, can be added to the list of procedures now available for animals. In Britain now, if you are both cranky and wealthy enough, it is entirely possible for your dog or your cat to receive chemotherapy, cataract surgery, dialysis, organ transplants, a new hip or poststroke medication.

Anything owners can get, their pets can get too. Vets now see a need for a national animal blood bank; and a company called PetScreen is marketing a commercial kit to screen dogs for lymphoma cancer.

In the States, needless to say, the medicalisation of pet care is even more – and I hesitate to use the word – advanced. There, vets perform CPR on dead animals; fit braces on their teeth, carry out cosmetic operations to improve their looks and, in one case earlier this year, actually did a £30,000 stem cell transplant on a cancerous golden retriever called Comet. And yes, it was successful. The gentle Comet is now eating his biscuits and waiting to die of something else.

What fascinates me is the morality of this phenomenon. Of course, some vets are privately uncomfortable with the way things are changing, but if anyone in the profession is seriously questioning the ethics of extending invasive human medicine to animals, then I haven’t heard their voices. The attitude appears to be that of the pornographers: they’re meeting a demand. In an age of affluence, how people spend their money is their own affair.

This is an entirely logical reaction to the biggest business opportunity the profession has seen. Right now, vets, the drug industry and pet insurance companies are hitting pay dirt. The incentives are massive. Are there canine statins yet? Anti-depressants? If not, I predict it will be only a matter of time, and then everyone with a dog or a cat aged 6 or over will be urged to use them.

But a very profound responsibility is abrogated here. Nobody seems to question if all these treatments are genuinely in the best interests of the animal – which, unless I’m much mistaken, is rather fundamental to veterinary ethics. Are vets confusing what they can do with what they should do? Am I thinking of my old dog when I insist on a hip replacement for him; or am I just being selfish and postponing the day when I must say goodbye? We are a long way, and getting farther all the time, from the correct balance between the right of a dumb animal not to suffer unnecessarily and the right of an owner to indulge in emotional immaturity.

What modern vets conveniently ignore is the fact that no one can ever explain to Fido what awaits him: that the pain and confusion of an operation, and the discomfort that follows, are all for his own good. He has no way of knowing that he’s going to feel better afterwards (if indeed he does); he just suffers, always in the moment.

I’d like to know how many academic studies have measured the stress experienced by a domestic animal when it is subjected to invasive procedures and lengthy recuperation. Very few, I would guess, for these are not the sort of things drug companies would fund.

But we desperately need such an evidence base. Surely, if we can study whether deer are stressed by being chased, as was done at the height of the hunting controversy, then we can measure whether a tumorous cat is more disturbed by a dozen visits to the surgery for chemotherapy than it would be by a peaceful, pain-free death.

Neither have I seen the militant animal rights lot complain about the extra suffering inflicted by ordinary owners who choose non-essential veterinary treatment. Rather the opposite, in fact. Animal cruelty campaigners, as much as the public, are wrapped in the prevailing confusion, believing that the supremacy of animal rights means their right to live for as long as possible.

Ironically, when it comes to this modern trend for medicalising animal treatment, the animals interests are not always at the top of the list. Instead we have sick animals as a commodity; an inversion of justice, whereby pet owners are made to feel guilty if they do not pay for invasive procedures; and some vets who feel party to institutionalised animal cruelty. It’s a dog’s life, right enough.

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