When Dr. Richard Allen chose a place for his new veterinary clinic in 1968, he had to shoo cows off the property so construction could begin.
He retired two months ago, and his clinic sits on a U.S. 67/167 access road, across from McCain Mall, which was constructed five years after he opened his doors.
"We weren't even in the city limits when we built, but when North Little Rock grew, it grew that way and it's all around us now," says Allen, 83, who lives about half a mile from the building he recently sold.
He decided in junior high school that he wanted to be a veterinarian.
"My folks raised cocker spaniels, just for fun, and whenever my dad would take one of the dogs to the veterinarian I would go with him and I thought, 'I could do this. I would like to do this,'" Allen says.
He remembers when a young dog died in his arms in their backyard, breaking his heart and furthering his conviction to study so he could help animals in distress.
Allen graduated from Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Following a pre-veterinary program at Henderson State College (now Henderson State University) in Arkadelphia he went to Oklahoma State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Stillwater, Okla.
"I never dreamed it was going to be as hard as it was, but I made it through," he says.
Allen met his wife, Doretta, on a tennis court in Little Rock while home on break in 1961. They married and had their first child before he graduated from veterinary school.
In 1964, he returned to North Little Rock and started work with an established veterinarian.
"I kind of liked being in practice with this guy but I guess he just didn't have as much business as he thought he did," Allen says. "He ran for the Senate and when he finished he came back and I got the boot."
Allen then took over the practice of a veterinarian who had died about six months earlier.
"I even hired his technician, who was a lady that knew more veterinary medicine than I did because she had been working for him for about 20 years," Allen says.
Allen's father, Tandy Van Nuys Allen, was a civil engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; his mother, Thelma, was a homemaker. She became the receptionist at Allen's clinic. Doretta was a stay-at-home-mom to their three sons then, but she was his office manager for 22 years before his retirement.
Allen's brother, the late Tandy Van Nuys Allen II, worked for the railroad; his sister, the late Phyllis Kincannon, was a well-known Republican party activist. Kincannon's husband, John, was a homebuilder and he built Allen's clinic.
His focus throughout has been dogs and cats.
"But when I first got out of veterinary school I needed to work on anything that I could find," he says. "This fellow called and said there was something wrong with his monkey and asked if I would see it. I thought, 'Good grief, I have no business looking at a monkey.' But I said, 'Sure, bring it on in.'"
The monkey, it turned out, had free run of the home and enjoyed sitting on the tops of doors. Someone had closed a door, and the monkey's tail was caught and broken.
"I think I ended up putting five or six casts on this monkey, and every time I would put one on he could take it off faster than I could get it on there," Allen says. "Evidently it turned out OK. It healed in spite of me."
Attitudes toward pets changed over the years, he says. Most pets were kept outside only when he entered the profession.
"In more recent years, most of my patients -- dogs and cats -- would be outside for just a short amount of time. Now there are very few dogs that stay outside all the time," he says. "You can tell by ringing the doorbell who has a dog."
One of Allen's patients, Peggy Sue, belonged to a woman who moved into a nursing home. The woman's granddaughter took Peggy Sue to see Allen.
"The dog was completely blind, with cataracts in both eyes, and had diabetes," he says.
The granddaughter was reticent about giving the dog insulin shots.
"I said, let me just take it and see if we can get it to where it doesn't need shots," he says. "Sometimes you can control diabetes in dogs, kind of like in people, with the right food."
The diet changes alone weren't enough, and he feared Peggy Sue would be euthanized.
"This little dog is the cutest thing," he says. "Over time, I got attached to this dog and so it's sitting here on the chair."
Post retirement, Allen has time to work on restoring his 1963 Austin Healey and napping in a boat on Greer's Ferry Lake while his wife fishes. He plans to do some volunteer work. He also has time to reflect on his long career.
"I would encourage anybody to go into veterinary medicine. It's something that I've enjoyed," he says. "There's never a dull moment."
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Dr. Richard Allen, 83, retired two months ago and sold the building that housed Allen Veterinary Clinic, just off U.S. 67/167 across from McCain Mall. Peggy Sue, a dachshund that was brought to him as a patient with cataracts and diabetes, now lives with Allen and his wife, Doretta. (Special to the Democrat-Gazette)