I i -, rn Dr. Keith Harrison did house calls Vet's price must have been right for past 47 years • Story continued from page 1. "I read this story where they said veterinary medicine was so important and I just thought it was an interesting field to get into," he said. Growing up on the family farm, he also became quite comfortable being around animals. After graduating from Belleville Collegiate Insti- tute, he taught school at Potter Settlement north of Tweed for a year to raise enough money to attend Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph. He completed the five-year program in 1954. He spent clinical internships with such veterinarians as Dr. Harry Burns of the Belleville Animal Hospi- tal. Harrison moved out west to begin his new life as a veterinarian. He spent a year in Camrose, Alta. but returned to Roslin. He purchased a closed-down cheese fac- tory from his father, renovated it and opened Har- rison Animal Hospital in 1957. "I enjoyed dealing with people because when you treat animals, you have to deal with people. There was always new things coming along in vet- erinary medicine so that it was never boring," Har- rison said. He said he could write a book about some of the unusual clients and circumstances he's had to deal with in 47 years as a vet. He recalled how he had to treat a baby ele- phant once. Apparently, a Quinte-area farmer was planning on taking the animal to the Toronto Exhi- bition when it got sick. Harrison treated it for a minor cold with a nee- dle full of antibiotics. The white mouse was his daughter's; it too needed antibiotics. He remembers operating on a puppy and removing "a belly full of stones." The owner had spilled some cream on a gravel roadway and the puppy licked it up, stones and all. "He wasn't the worst for wear," he said. Harrison did house calls through- out his years in practice and one of the funniest requests was to treat cows who got drunk from eating apples. "I'd have to give them intravenous and then they would have to sleep it off," he said. Harrison always chuckles when he recalls what one of his first clients ever told him. "A farmer brought this dog in heat and I spayed it. The next day when he came in to pick it up, he looked at the $6 bill and said I'll never last because that bill was high- way robbery. "Forty-seven years later, I was still practising. I guess I got the last laugh," said Harrison. I '" ,- ' ^ '