When staff at Cedar Pet Clinic in Lake Elmo asked John Baillie on Thursday morning for some last words of wisdom on his last day at work, the longtime veterinarian was already thinking about one of his upcoming cases. “I think we should start an ImmunoRegulin on Torey,” Baillie said, referring to an immune modulating injection for Linda Stratig’s Lynx Point cat. By the end of the day, after treating more than a dozen different pets, Baillie was once again asked if he had any wise words to share with staff before retiring after 52 years as a veterinarian. “I hope you all enjoy it for as long as you want to, as I have,” Baillie said, raising a Champagne flute for a toast. “Here’s to all of you — the best staff I’ve ever had.” For Baillie, 76, of St. Paul, who started treating animals, reptiles and birds in the Twin Cities in 1972, deciding to retire was “bittersweet,” he said. “I got enough signals that it was probably for the best, and I’m leaving it in really good hands, and that certainly helps.” His practice included dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, gerbils, hamsters, hedgehogs, turtles, rats and mice, chinchillas, ferrets, guinea pigs, pet chickens, ducks and geese, snakes, iguanas, chameleons, frogs and sugar gliders, emus, peacocks and pot-bellied pigs. His philosophy was: “If it fits through the front door, we’ll work on it,” he said. Cases in point: He once performed a cesarean section on a 15-foot boa constrictor, lanced and cleaned an abscess on an elephant, and treated a tarantula for a respiratory illness. He once had a horse dislocate his shoulder; picked up psittacosis, a rare infectious disease, from a parrot; and was clawed by a tiger. Treating such a wide variety of animals meant Baillie was never bored. “It’s been constantly interesting,” he said. “I never knew what the next thing coming in the door was going to lead to. It’s pretty different from a dog-and-cat practice. If all you saw were dogs and cats, you might see very similar problems all day long. For me, I never had any idea what I was going to see and what I was going to be doing. It’s been quite the career.” On Thursday, his caseload included doing acupuncture on five cats, a Clumber spaniel named Aspen and a guinea pig named Pony; vaccinating a 14-year-old Bichon Frisé named Cabo San Lucas and doing a checkup on a 30-pound, 12-week-old Bernese mountain dog. Aspen’s owner, Jayde Dian of Somerset, Wis., is a certified veterinarian technician at Cedar Pet Clinic. She and a number of other employees brought their pets to work on Thursday for last treatments by Baillie. “Aspen gets more needles than any of my other patients at this point just because she’s got multiple areas that are involved,” Baillie said. “She likes it. She’s being petted. Life is good for her. That’s just this dog’s personality. It’s ‘Oh, good. I’m being petted. I don’t care what else you’re doing with me.’” Baillie’s clients come from all over the state to be treated. “I’ve got some rabbits in Rochester that I see,” he said. “I’ve got one bird that comes from Sioux Falls once a year, and a bird from Iowa that comes once a year. I have some patients that I see from Fargo on a fairly regular basis.” Baillie, who grew up in Roseville, decided he wanted to be a vet when he was 14. He graduated from the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Science in 1972. After working at a clinic in Eagan for a year, he and a partner co-founded the Cedar Pet Clinic in South Minneapolis in 1973. “When we set up the clinic, we wrote a letter to all 100 clinics in the five-county area and said that if people had clients with birds, we would see them,” he told the Pioneer Press in 2022. “I think every veterinarian at those clinics said, ‘Hmmmm. If they see birds, they’ll see anything, and that’s what’s happened.’” Cedar Pet Clinic expanded to Lake Elmo in 1996 after Baillie and his wife, Margaret “Peg” Guilfoyle, who lived in Grant, decided it was time to find a practice closer to home. Guilfoyle found a building in Lake Elmo near the Lake Elmo Inn, and Baillie began practicing two days a week in Minneapolis and two days a week
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