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 in Lake Elmo. Cedar Pet Clinic moved to its current location on Stillwater Boulevard in 2006; Baillie sold his interest in the Minneapolis clinic in 2005, but remained in practice there until 2007.

Baillie began cutting down his days at work a few years ago, and he has worked one day a week since the beginning of the year.

As word of his upcoming retirement spread over the past few months, clients like Tim Buske began booking appointments for their pets to be seen by Baillie one last time. Buske, who lives in Brooklyn Center, brought Noah, his Goffin’s cockatoo, in last week. Noah has been treated by Baillie for 31 years, Buske said.

Baillie was always willing to go the extra mile when it came to Noah, Buske said. “One day, about 10 years ago, Noah got really sick, and Dr. Baillie was on vacation up on the North Shore,” he said. “I called, and they said, ‘We’ll try and get a hold of Dr. Baillie, and he can walk us through treating him. In the meantime, he’s coming back home to take care of him.’ He cut his vacation short because of a sick bird.”

Noah scared other vets, but Baillie never flinched when treating him, Buske said.

“The first time Dr. Baillie treated him, he reached right into the cage and took him right out with his bare hands,” Buske said. “I refer to him as the real life Dr. Doolittle. He’s that way with every animal. We are going to miss him. We’ve been really lucky. Noah wouldn’t have made it past whatever was going on 10 years ago if not for Dr. Baillie.”

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Baillie is a past president of the Minnesota Veterinary Medical Association, and in 2016 was named the state Veterinarian of the Year. He was a regular lecturer at the University of Minnesota School of Veterinary Medicine, for the Minnesota Medical Association and other organizations.

In honor of his retirement, the Minnesota Veterinary Medical Foundation is setting up a Dr. John Baillie Exotic Pets Scholarship.

Veterinarian Kirstin Keller is succeeding Baillie as medical director of Cedar Pet Clinic. Keller worked at Cedar from 2006 to 2010 as support staff before achieving her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and returning as a doctor in 2014.

The clinic’s leadership team also includes lead certified veterinary technician Sue Walter, who has worked with Baillie since 1987. Baillie’s daughter, Maggie Baillie, also will stay on as hospital manager; she has worked for Cedar on and off since she was about 14.

“It is such a special place,” Maggie Baillie said. “No other work environment could compare. ‘Doc’ — that’s what we call him — has touched the lives of thousands of people and their pets over the years. We are all lucky to have worked with him.”

Baillie and his wife, Peg, plan to spend part of their retirement aboard Blue Boat Home, their 25-foot Ranger Tug.

“It’s a sleep-aboard boat, and it’s trailerable,” he said. “It’s like a mobile cabin. We plan to haul it to Lake Michigan and spend six to seven weeks on Lake Michigan. We’ll get some visits from family and see some other friends along the way.”

Baillie, who owns a rescue gray tabby cat named Wheezy, said he remains fascinated by the intelligence of animals.

“They understand a lot of commands,” he said. “They understand what you want from them. Most of our dogs, their goal in life is to please us. The better they understand us, the more pleased we are, and people can interpret that as they wish.

“You know cats wake up in the morning and wonder, ‘Where are the servants with my food?’ The dogs wake up in the morning and say, ‘Where are the gods with my food?’ The cats are, like, ‘Why should I learn to do anything? They’re going to take care of me anyway.’”

IF YOU GO

A party to honor John Baillie, the longtime veterinarian and owner of Cedar Pet Clinic in Lake Elmo, will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Lake Elmo Inn Event Center. Clients and community members are invited. Refreshments will be served.

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