OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford Dr. Jon Redfield, left, and Dr. Josef Powell stand next to the sign at their business, Fredonia Animal Hospital.

Fredonia Animal Hospital is 50 years old this year, and as it looks back, it is also barking and meowing with anticipation for the future.

Dr. Josef Powell was there at the start, and he’s still there.

“I started working for an old veterinarian in Cassadaga when I was 12 or 13, and it kind of just went on that I was going to become a veterinarian,” the Fredonia native explained in a recent interview at the practice he founded. “I went through veterinarian school and when I got out, he wasn’t ready to quit. So I asked him if it would be all right if I might start here.”

Powell started his career elsewhere after college, but found himself visiting his parents in November 1968 and taking a drive down Route 60 with his wife, Linda.

“There was a for sale sign in the window of this building,” he said. “I told my wife, who was a veterinary technician, that this would be a good location for an animal hospital. We called the real estate agent, looked at it that night at about 7 or 8 o’clock and decided right there that we were going to go for it.”

The Powells remodeled the building, moved to Fredonia in January 1969 and Fredonia Animal Hospital opened in April 1969.

However, as Josef Powell remembered, nearby dairy farm owner Leonard Aldrich asked him to look at a sick cow before the business officially started.

“My wife and I lived in this building,” Powell said. “We started out on a shoestring.”

Now semi-retired but still working at the hospital two days a week, he mused about how much things have changed in his business.

“The technology is all changed now from 52 years ago when I graduated. We didn’t do hardly any blood testing and whatnot. It was physical diagnoses formed by experience over the years,” he said. “My first X-ray machine was Army surplus. … I don’t think you can start out that way anymore because there’s so much technology and if you don’t provide ‘standard of care’ then you’re up against it with the Board of Ethics.

“The clientele has changed,” Powell continued. “In those days there was only two old veterinarians in the area and people were just happy to have somebody see them. Now, there’s a lot of veterinarians around and people expect more.”

Fredonia Animal Hospital has changed with the times. Now owned by Dr. Jon Redfield and his wife, Sharon, who is the practice manager, the hospital has the latest technology for healing beloved pets. It recently expanded and slightly reconfigured itself.

During the OBSERVER’s visit to the facility, the Redfields offered a tour and showed off their new blood lab equipment, just upgraded in December. They are also proud of their new digital X-ray technology, installed in January. Dr. Redfield demonstrated on a tablet how he can show a pet owner an x-ray of their animal just seconds after it is taken.

Sharon Redfield said an entry hall was built for the main entrance last year and a separate entrance door was added to the “bereavement room,” offering more privacy for pet owners who are saying goodbye to pets that are about to be put down.

The Powells did plenty of work on the building over the years, too, before the Redfields bought the practice in 1999.

“They did an addition and some work in 1989,” noted Sharon Redfield, who talked up the large operating room they installed. “Dr. Powell was smart when he put this in,” she said. “Most animal hospital operating rooms are a third of this size with no windows. … When you do C-sections on dogs, you can need seven people, so it’s nice to have size.”

Powell said such additions have been necessary over the years to provide the highest level of service.

“We didn’t think too much about the business end of it but now it’s all business,” he said. “We’re still veterinarians but you have to be able to pay for all of this, so you have to have some business knowledge to go along with it.”

However, “the biggest thing about being successful is service,” he said.

Fredonia Animal Hospital plans to give back to the community that it has provided service to for 50 years with an open house event and party in July, though Sharon Redfield said the details are unclear right now.

Dr. Powell closed the interview by emphasizing the family nature of the business.

“Without my wife, Linda, beside me or behind me we couldn’t do it,” he said. “It’s the same with Jon. His wife is working here, too.”