Pulse - July 2021 - 5

JIM BELL
SCVMA PROFILE
Dr. Scott Anderson Has Always
Sought Adventure in His Life
D
r. Scott M. Anderson may be one of the
most traveled veterinarians - he may even
be at the top of the list - having visited 93
countries. And despite battling illness in the last
few years he is not through yet.
" I've done a little traveling in my years, " he admitted
in an interview, including driving a Model T in the centenary
redo of the 1907 Peking-to-Paris Road Rally and
visiting both the North and South poles.
" There are plenty of places to scuba dive, which I'm
still able to do, plenty of art museums around the world
I haven't visited - and plenty of destinations still to be
determined, " he said.
Dr. Anderson retired in January, 2019, after going on
disability in February, 2018. He was co-founder of the
36-doctor VCA Animal Specialty & Emergency Center,
one of the largest multispecialty veterinary hospitals in
the country with six specialty departments.
He is a diplomate of the ACVS, ACVECC and ABVP
- the only American veterinarian ever to achieve this triple
specialty certification.
His ultimate road trip was inspired by a remarkable
event a century earlier. " In 1907, " Dr. Anderson said, " the
main newspaper in Paris published a front-page article on
this new invention changing the world. It was the automobile.
They threw out a challenge: Does anybody have
the courage to try to drive one of these things between
the two most distant national capitols? At the time they
were Peking (now Beijing) and Paris.
" Five people accepted the challenge. Two of them
completed the journey in 1907. A British road rally organization
decided to restage the rally in 1997 on the 90th
anniversary. I read the story about it and I was sure they'd
do it again in 2007 so I put my hat in the ring and was
accepted. I acquired a 1909 Model T for the trip. "
Dr. Anderson was joined by his friend, the late Dr.
Rob Fisher. " Off we went. Our car made it into the
Gobi Desert where a sandstorm did us in. So I joined
forces with a fellow competitor in a '56 Bentley and
completed the race across Siberia to Moscow, to St.
Petersburg, down through the Baltics and Poland, Germany
and France. It was five weeks on the road and
quite an adventure.
" When the Model T broke down in the sandstorm,
we took shelter in an abandoned cattle pen with the
sand storming around us. We set up camp that evening,
which was pleasant, and enjoyed the last couple of beers
in our cooler. "
Near the end of the sojourn, " we were pulled over
twice by the German police, once for a broken taillight
PULSE
JULY 2021
and once because we didn't have a German license plate.
They let us go each time and we managed to get across
the border into France to complete the journey. "
The 1909 Model T was a Southern Widetrack, Dr.
Anderson said, a rare version with a slightly wider
wheelbase so it could fit into the wagon ruts on many
roads in the early 1900s. After the rally the car was transported
back to the United States, he said, and he and Dr.
Fisher did one more trip in it - a road rally from Henderson,
Nev., to Galena, Illinois.
" Then I donated the car to the Automobile Driving
Museum in El Segundo, he said. I was happy to donate
it to that museum because they give rides to people in
their cars. "
His first polar expedition was in 2003 when he skied
to the South Pole. He visited the North Pole in 2008
via dogsled. He also has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, the
Mountains of the Moon in Uganda and completed
the Kora - a pilgrimage around Mt. Kailash in western
Tibet that is 52 kilometers long and reaches altitudes of
18,000 feet. He completed the trek in 15½ hours. " I was
in good physical shape at the time, " he said, " but it was
quite a walk. "
Dr. Anderson returned to the Antarctic in 2012 to
trace the route across the island of South Georgia taken
by Ernest Shackleton, who led several British exploratory
expeditions to the Antarctic in the early 1900s. " It
was a three-day ski and mountaineering expedition, " he
said. " Shackleton and his men completed it in 36 hours. "
Now 58 years old, Dr. Anderson ran marathons in the
1990s. He said that he has done more scuba diving than
any other sporting activity, including in such places as
the Great Barrier Reef, Micronesia, New Guinea and
the Caribbean.
He is married to Dr. Lisa Brevik, who works at
Sepulveda Animal Hospital in Culver City. They met
when she came to the United States from
con gtinued
5
Pulse - July 2021

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