Dr. Randall Ross imagines that his hypothetical autobiographical movie begins with the following scene: A gray Mercedes Benz with red leather interior and spitshined rims bombs down a dirt road in Torrington, Connecticut. In the passenger seat sits a miniature Dr. Ross, a ten-year-old version of himself.

Across from him, driving haphazardly, veterinarian Dr. Al Friedlander, his boss, maneuvers his trumpet from its case. He tightens his lips and points the instrument out the driver’s side window. Eyes partially committed to theroad, face tilted to the opened window, he blows through his trumpet, serenading the New England farmhouses framed against the dirt road; meanwhile, Ross holds a large reusable rectal sleeve out the passenger window. It’s just been washed in a client’s milk room and is now billowing like a runway sock, filtering the country air.

As the two near their next client, likely a bovine in distress, the Benz leaves a cloud of dust in its wake. The boy, one hand gripping the seat, the other hand holding the rectal sleeve, is realizing his future.

Ross found that future years later amidst the rolling hills of Vermont as the first small animal mobile veterinarian in the state—a state he fell in love with while completing his undergraduate work in pre-veterinary medicine at the University of Vermont, a state that is “not a state, but a condition,” he tells me as we bump along back roads to the next appointment.

His own hand-built log cabin is nestled in New Haven, beyond the train tracks along a dirt road, just short of the Pulp Mill Covered Bridge. His dining room opens to a small pond, and from his living room there is a clear view of the hen house and horse barn. Here Ross lives amidst baskets, antiques, a wood stove and original paintings. In his late 50s, he has swimmer’s shoulders and narrow hips. At a quick glance he resembles a brown-eyed Frank Sinatra in his Mia Farrow era.

A white Dodge Sprinter van, shiny and new, is parked in the driveway. The van is Ross’ version of Dr. Al Friedlander’s Mercedes Benz, the car that carried the unlikely pair from house call to house call in Connecticut all those years ago. And though Ross chose to practice smallanimal medicine, he adopted the large-animal framework by making house calls, taking to the winding roads and rising hills of Vermont.

On a weekly basis, Ross may see an average of 30 clients—mostly dogs and cats, with a rare guinea pig cropping up. Thus Ross visits nearly 1,000 homes a year. His clientele live, for the most part, in Addison County, a Norman Rockwell dream in western Vermont. His days begin in his van and unfold along lakeside roads, villages and farmlands.

Today Ross is in the passenger seat while Lynda Malzac, his vet tech, clutches the wheel and barrels down the dirt road. Though she does not wield a trumpet as Dr. Friedlander once did, she is equally preoccupied, pointing to wild turkeys, snow geese, deer and houses while Ross prepares for his house calls, peering at the laptop that bounces haphazardly upon his knees.

At 9:30 a.m., the Sprinter crawls up the winding road to Lincoln. The air is sweet and thick with the smell of dying leaves. Elder Berry Farm is Ross’s first stop this morning. The farm overlooks Mount Abraham, pressed against an autumn blue sky. Clydesdales lean into the ground, forming perfect angles, and an old restored farmhouse sprawls before the magnificent view. To call this a farm is oversimplifying: This is a country manor.

Marilyn Ganahl, the owner, blond and bobbed, is already outside, waving vigorously. Ganahl has a unique collection of adopted and rescued animals: a litter of adopted kittens in her barn, an adopted Doberman in her living room, rescued Clydesdales grazing in her fields and an aviary in her front room, stocked with plumes of rehabilitated tropical birds.