Ed Simon, Los Angeles veterinarian, RIP

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I’m speaking for my dogs and myself -- and for hundreds of dogs and cats and their ‘’people’’ -- when I lament the too-early death of Los Angeles veterinarian Edward Simon.

Ed was not much older than 50 when he died and had spent nearly 30 of those years caring for critters. He had a quirky way about him when it came to people, but what counted was his intuitive instinct for animals and for what ailed them, and his bedside manner with them was phenomenal. He could put them at ease quickly and suspect by touch and smell and sight something that other vets relied on machines and tests to suss out. It was a gift.

He was generous with his time and services with the myriad animals left abandoned on his office doorstep -- people take it for granted that they can dump their unwanteds on vets -- and with rescue groups such as Downtown Dog Rescue too. And no one who had visited his vet’s offices on Avenue 26, not far from the city’s North Central animal shelter, would have failed to make the acquaintance of his own rescue cats, and the ‘’house Chihuahua,’’ born without front legs, who scooted around the premises like Criscoed lightning.

Ed Simon was the vet equivalent of an old-fashioned human general practitioner, and like those dwindling numbers of great GPs, his death means one DVM fewer practicing the healing arts on the helpless.

-- Patt Morrison