Leeton veterinarian Brian Munro  (pictured) hung up his stethoscope recently after 53  years’ service to  farm and companion animals.
As principal veterinarian at Leeton Veterinary Hospital  Brian attracted a strong following  of clients from Narrandera, Leeton, Griffith and Murrumbidgee shires.
His education at Hurlstone Agricultural College and holidays at his grandfather’s sheep station at Bourke introduced Brian to livestock and led him to Sydney University to study veterinary science,
“I did not set out to be a vet. I wanted to own a sheep station,” he said.
“As soon as I finished Year 12 AMP offered me an actuary. This was entirely left field”, he said.  
Brian declined the offer, saying he would have been frustrated with the politics and the confines of an office.  
 I graduated at 21 into a drought . There were few vets west of the Great Divide and few jobs,” he said.
One of the lucky ones, Brian got a job straight away with a dairy practice at Colac as one of two junior vets and met his first challenge, to overcome clients’ misconception of the new chum in their midst.
Brian said his colleague was one year older than him and confident. Most importantly, he was  from Geelong and knew all  about Victorian  League Football (VLF).
‘‘I had just arrived and as I knew nothing about the VLF or the Carlton, Richmond and Geelong teams, people did not trust me as a vet,” he said.
Not prepared to have his ability judged on knowledge of footy, Brian met the challenge head-on and won the doubting Thomases over.
Ironically, while he had vowed never to do dairy cows Brian made his  debut as a fully-fledged vet in 1967  in the heartland of southern Victoria’s dairy industry with the very bovines he wanted to avoid.
He has no regrets. Colac was where he met his wife- to- be local high school teacher Jan, at a teachers’ party. 
The couple courted against a backdrop of dairy herds and were married two years later in Melbourne.
Brian’s workload increased during the Vietnam War when he was called to undertake CMF service at Colac and Melbourne.  
He said working as a vet while meeting his service commitment was tough going.
”With the CMF I had one weekend off a month,” he said.
After gaining experience in small animal practice at Mont Albert, Melbourne and with larger animals on the city’s outskirts, Brian moved to Leeton with Jan in 1973 to work for long-serving Leeton   
veterinarian Dr David Rees.
He became an equal partner three years later and bought the practice in 1983 on Dr Rees’s retirement.
“Cattle prices were down and there was a drought. These were grim times. There was little call for vets,” Brian recalled.
This was to change rapidly with the highly infectious brucellosis and tuberculosis (TB)  diseases, both transmittable to humans, rampant in cattle herds.
“When I came here we TB tested 17,000 head and vaccinated the calves with a live vaccine,” Brian said.
The diseases were successfully eradicated.
Jan joined the practice at the change of ownership as a bookkeeper/receptionist and later added veterinary nursing to her duties.
“There was no formal training for veterinary nurses in those days so I learnt on the job,” she said.
Fortunately for Brian his new nurse was a fast learner and a valuable helper in emergencies.
As she had done at Colac, Jan accompanied  Brian on his rounds and  helped with the out- of- hours  calls at weekends, nights and early mornings.
“I learnt to hold onto cows’ tails and I sat on cows’ heads during calving difficulties. I helped to deliver calves and to assist with caesareans.
“ Friends asked  if I knew what I was getting into marrying a vet,” she said.
 Jan said it was a marvellous experience. She  retired after 12 years on the job.
Brian is understandably stumped when asked how many animals he has treated in his career.
“ ‘Thousands’ is his guesstimate, but tens of thousands is closer to the  mark.  
Companion animals and working dogs alone account for a large number of patients recorded in the  Leeton Veterinary Hospital ledger.
“Up to 30 animals a day are admitted,” Brian said. 
“There may be 10 in the hospital and 20 who have been  in hospital and discharged or are returning for treatment.”
This is 500 animals a year which equates to more than 25,00 over Brian’s 53 years of veterinary service.
Added to the sum are cattle, sheep, horses, dogs, cats, rabbits ,pigs, ostriches, goats, alpacas, assorted wildlife and a monkey.
Brian said the monkey was his most unusual patient. It was at a little mini-zoo  at a service station near Colac and was injured in a fight with another monkey.   
“I injected the monkey and stitched up its injuries.” he said.
While acknowledging that injuries are an occupational hazard for vets. Brian volunteers that one of his was self-inflicted.
“I put a drill through my finger while I was inserting a pin for a broken leg in a dog and found I was attached to the dog,” Brian said.   
“The nurses called out “what do we do?”  and I replied “LEAVE THE ROOM!”
Brian can laugh about it now as he rattles off a list of mishaps which were not his doing.
“I’ve been bitten and scratched by cats, bitten by dogs and kicked by horses.”
He admits to” kicking the fridge a lot” when things go haywire.
The’ cat escapee’ is one such example. Gleefully relating the incident while trying not to double up with mirth, staff member Joyce Guest said the cat was scared and “went crazy”
It got out of its cage and ran amok through the building. 
“Cages were flying all over the place. It was chaos,” Joyce said.
Finally the staff and the cat ran out of steam. The escapee was caught and peace restored.
Brian’s patients come in all shapes and sizes ranging from tiny new-born kittens to the feathered heavyweights of the bird world , African ostriches who, when fully grown, can tip the scales at 100kg.    
He served as vet to the big birds at the Male family’s Colinroobie ostrich farm” Alabama” for 10 years during which Brian sexed the chicks and broke new ground to design the first ostrich medicine from scratch for the fledgling industry.
Drawing on his surgical skills and experience of animal medicines he came up with a winning mix to produce a medicine tailored to ostriches’ needs.
“We had to combine poultry farming medicine with small animal medicine and with horse medicine  because horses are fragile like birds,” he said.  
Brian spent 10 years performing artificial insemination (AI) on standard-bred mares for horse breeders, inseminating 400 mares a year for an all-up total of 4000 who he said probably produced 4000 foals.
While skilled with AI, a request from a client for embryo transfers on Angora goats placed him in unknown territory,
“The Leeton Research Station gave us coaching which was very good,’’ he said.
The  goats and those in another client’s herd received the embryos  in a ”a logistical exercise’’ over three days  with Brian and colleague Dr Peter Brunsdon working together.  
The Pig Improvement Company (PIC) at Grong Grong was among Brian’s long-term clients.          
In 2001 Brian left his practice and headed to the  UK to help  during the foot and mouth cattle disease outbreak as a member of an Australian Veterinary Association contingent of 36 volunteers.   
Reflecting on the changes in veterinary practice over his half-century plus service to the profession, Brian scrolled back in his memory bank to the 1960s when vets made house calls, consultations cost $2.50 and vets wore a shirt and tie to work and home again.
Brian said access to technology was perhaps the most beneficial change. 
While high-tech equipment had replaced many of the manual tasks of yesteryear and  the costs of running a state-of-the art  veterinary hospital had risen significantly, profits had dropped.
Brian said nowadays, 10 to 15% of a veterinary practice’s gross takings was profit as against 50% in earlier days.
Keeping abreast of advances in animal health and surgical techniques also came at a cost.
LVH’s commitment to animals and their owners has earned the practice a number of gongs, including a coveted Pfizer Award for Excellence in Customer Service.  
Brian passes much of the credit for the success of the practice on to his dedicated team of veterinary nurses and their fellow staff members. 
In a letter notifying clients of the sale of his practice to veterinarian Dr Peter Brunsdon, Brian gave his assurance that the new owner would provide the same quality service with expertise that he had built up as a veterinarian of more than 30 years’ standing.
For Dr Brunsdon, the purchase is particularly poignant. He was the first veterinarian employed by Brian when he took over the practice from Dr Rees.
Brian said he would miss the chats with clients, but true to form Brian he will not be idle. House renovations are on his radar.